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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


“re-told tales of the hills and 

SHORES OF MAINE,” 

8vo, $1.25, 


OUEENSHITHE 


HENRIETTA G. ROWE 

M 

AUTHOR OF 

‘re-told tales of the hills and shores of MAINE” 


“ Get leave to work." 

— Mrs. Browning. 



JUN 14 1895 


BUFFALO 

CHARLES WELLS MOULTON 

1895 



A 




y 






y 


Copyright by 

MRS. HENRIETTA G. ROWE. 
1895, 


CONTENTS 


PAGE. 

CHAPTER I. 

Prue's New Bonnet 9 

CHAPTER II. 

Mv Lady Greatheart 26 

CHAPTER III. 

A "Bill for Buryin’ " 41 

CHAPTER IV. 

"Ettu Brute" 57 

CHAPTER V. 

" I Smell A Rat! " . 72 

CHAPTER VI. 

"Man’s Extremity" 89 

CHAPTER Vn. 

"Is God’s Opportunity" 107 

CHAPTER VIII. 

More Surprises Than One 125 

CHAPTER IX. 

The First Gentleman in the Land 144 

CHAPTER X. 

Love is Mightier than Law 167 


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CHAPTER I. 


PRUE’S NEW BONNET. 

“T X TELL, to be sure, I have seen worse bunnits, 
V V in the course o’ my life.” 

And Roxy Rae balanced upon one uplifted hand a 
marvelous structure of straw and blue ribbons, known 
in the Rae household as ” Prue’s new bonnet,” while 
her plain face grew almost pretty with the smile, half 
tender, half proud, that gradually crept over it : 

“You say Miss Squire Dean turned round twice in 
her pew during sermon time, to get a look at it? ” 

“ times,” corrected Prue, her fair, childish 
cheek flushing rosily in remembrance of her innocent 
enjoyment of this unwonted bit of Sunday finery, 
with which her elder sister’s loving ingenuity had pro- 
vided her. 

‘ ‘ The Patridge girls, both Plumy and Puff, come to 
me right after meetin, and wanted to know if” — 

” Pd learn them to braid the pattern,” laughed 
Roxy with a dainty fillip at one of the huge tilting 
bows that marked the dividing line between crown and 
brim. 

” I knew that would be the first thing,” she went on 
more soberly, and with a shade of annoyance in tone 


lO 


QUEENSHITHE. 


and manner, “ and, — I don’t want to seem disobligin 
or stingy, — but this braid is my own invention, that 
I’ve been months thinkin out and workin up, and I do 
think I’d ought to have all there is to be made on it.” 
“ Ye — es, I suppose so, but — ” 

She stopped short, with an uneasy glance at her 
sister’s face, noting with secret trepidation, that the 
firm set mouth and chin had taken on those decided 
curves that, with Roxy, always meant a settled purpose 
to go straight ahead, let what would stand in the way. 

“I’m afraid the neighbors ’ll be dretfully put out,” 
she ventured, “ They’ll think it’s cropin in you want- 
ing to keep the secret to yourself, and makin them 
pay f’r work that they could just as well do for them- 
selves if they only knew how. ’ ’ 

For a moment, Roxy looked as she felt, terribly hurt 
and grieved. Her pretty sister was her darling, and 
any hint of blame from her was harder to bear than 
the harshest censure of the whole world outside could 
possible be. 

“ It’s for sake, — your’s and Sewell’s, — ” she 

said gently. “ With the house and garden, and our 
straw work, spring and fall, we’ve contrived to make 
a decent living so far. But the time’s comin when 
both of you ought to have a chance for a better edu- 
cation than you’d ever get here, and I’ve been thinkin 
and plannin’ for some way to bring it about. To be 
sure I’ve laid up a little since father died, but it’s only 
a little, not half enough to pay your school expenses 
for a single year. So this invention that I’ve kind o’ 


prue’s new bonnet. 


II 


tumbled into, as you might say, at the last, Fm going 
to keep to myself, and if folks want bunnits made like 
it, they’ll have to hire me to make ’em. In that way, 
I calculate that in the next three or four years, I shall 
be able to lay enough by to send Sewell to Bowdoin, 
and, — how would you like to go away to that school 
that Sarah Dean’s goin to next fall ? ” 

“ Oh wouldn’t I be happy! ” and Prue’s calm blue 
eyes, — a heritage from her gentle mother, — kindled 
with eager delight at the thought of such an unhoped- 
for privilege being made possible for her. 

“I believe I’d go barefoot for the next three years, 
if I knew that, at the end of that time I could go 
there, and learn all about the wonderful things that 
Sarah says they teach there, and ’ ’ with a little blush, 

‘ ‘ I could be a teacher perhaps sometime, myself, and 
earn lots of money, and get you some new and pretty 
dresses like other girls, and fix up the house, and buy 
Sewell all the new books he wants, and, oh! what lots 
and lots of beautiful things I’ll do when I’ve learned 
enough to keep school myself” 

Roxy smiled indulgently : 

“You’d better remember the story of the milkmaid 
in the reading book, that counted her chickens before 
they was hatched. ’ ’ she said roguishly, with a nod in 
the direction of the unswept hearth, that the child 
interpreted with a conscious blush, and something as 
near a pout as her rosy lips were capable of : 

“ There’s some comfort in planning pleasant things, 
even if they don’t come out as you’d have them,” she 
murmured, but her sister gentiy checked her with : 


12 


QUEENSHITHE. 


‘ ‘ There now, we wont make no more talk about it. 
I only wanted you to understand why I am so set on 
keeping the secret of this braid in my own hands. I f 
you’ll fly round, and brush up the floor now, I’ll set 
right down to my straw work. The Barstow boys 
ought to a’ had their hats a week ago, — Ben was in 
Saturday, and complained that ’twas getting so warm 
that he couldn’t wear his fox-skin cap much longer, 
and I promised to hurry his hat up, right off.” 

The smiles had by this time come back to Prue’ s 
face, and as she wielded with practiced hand the 
broom of green, sweet smelling cedar twigs, drawing 
with it any number of queer, fanciful patterns upon 
the freshly sanded floor, she sang one of the favorite 
hymns of the day, her sweet, mellow tones falling 
upon her sister’s partial ear like a pleasant prophecy of 
days to come, when this fair home flower might be 
transplanted to a sunnier and more congenial soil, 
where other eyes than hers would note and be glad- 
dened by its pure loveliness. 

In the quiet country neighborhood where the Raes 
had their home, the unselfish devotion of the elder 
girl to her orphaned brother and sister was re- 
garded with approval or mitigated scorn, according to 
the spiritual lights of the lookers-on themselves. 

Jefferson Hackett’s widow, or the widder Jeff ” as 
she was known in neighborhood parlance, being a 
cousin, and the only relative that the Raes had in that 
part of the country, felt it her bounden duty to take 
Roxy to task for her unvarying care of the younger 
children : 


prue’s new bonnet. 


13 


“You’re a fool, Roxy Rae, working like a dog to 
keep them young ones spruced up fine as fiddles, 
while you wear the same old bombazine for best, year 
in, year out. If you’d only prink up a little, and go 
round more with the other young folks, like as not 
some good, likely feller’ d take a shine to you, — for, 
though I can’t in conscience say you’re harnsome, 
you’re smart as a steel trap, and that goes a good 
ways with sensible young men now a-days, let me tell 
you. As ’ tis’ you stand a fair chance of having to 
dance in the brass kettle at Prue’s weddin, or I’ll miss 
my guess.” 

It was many a long day before the girl got over the 
smart of this cruel and indelicate side thrust, and it 
needed more than one kindly, encouraging word 
and smile from appreciative friends to heal the hurt 
that her womanly pride and self respect had suffered. 

That Roxy was not ‘ ‘ harnsome ’ ’ according to the 
buxom standard of the country folk about her, the 
girl well knew, and perhaps this very consciousness of 
her own lack of personal charms may have accounted 
in part for the extravagant delight with which — how- 
ever prudently concealed from its object, — she watched 
the unfolding beauties of her younger sister Prudence. 

Still she was not uncomely, this dark browed, clear 
eyed girl, to those at least who, looking below the 
surface, could see and comprehend the brave, unselfish 
spirit that animated that unpretentious body; while 
kindly Nature had gifted her with something that, in 
many eyes, more than compensated for her lack of 


14 


QUEENSHITHE. 


personal beauty, — an ingenuity and skill, inborn 
rather than acquired, that made the simple country 
women hold up their hands in silent amazement, as one 
new ‘ ‘ notion ’ ’ after another made its appearance, 
evolved from her ever active, inventive brain. 

And oh, the marvelous cunning of those supple 
brown fingers! whose every tip seemed to have a will 
power of its own, so smoothly and deftly did the most 
intricate piece of work assume the form and propor- 
tions of a perfected whole, under their skilful touch. 

Netting and knotting, the progenitors of our modem 
‘ ‘ crochet, ’ ’ were in high favor with the lovers of fancy 
work, in the early part of the century, and from far and 
near, maids and matrons flocked to see and admire 
Roxy Rae’s handiwork, and beg her to teach them 
the intricacies of those graceful patterns, for, most of 
them being her own invention, were a complete puzzle 
to the uniniated eye. 

Had she lived a century later, no doubt our little 
country maiden would have shown herself no insig- 
nificant competitor for the prizes offered for those 
artistic decorations that a revival of the half forgotten 
art of needlework has made popular; while on the 
other hand, a few centuries earlier would doubtless 
have found her employed by some fine lady of court 
or castle, to design patterns for a gorgeous altar 
cloth or silken pennon, unless, (which is quite as 
likely,) she had met the fate of a dabbler in the for- 
bidden arts, and been drowned or hanged like other 
inventors of an age that held it a crime for a man, and 


prue’s new bonnet. 


15 


especially for a woman, to be brighter than her 
neighbors. 

But now that courtly lady and castled dame were 
but pale shadows, looking out from a dim and nearly 
forgotten past, while the then sturdy spirit of the 
young Republic would have scorned to solicit their 
patronage even if they had still existed, there was 
small opportunity for Roxy to make her skill and taste 
profitable in a community of plain, hard working 
country folk, so that the only work that her clever 
fingers found to do was in the braiding of coarse 
straw hats and bonnets for the neighboring farmers 
and their thrifty wives and daughters, while even in 
this humble field she was not without a competitor. 

The “ widder Jefif,” though comfortably circum- 
stanced, with neither chick nor child to share her 
ample income, was always eager to turn what she 
called an ‘ ‘ honest penny, ’ ’ by doing the same work 
for a few pennies less than her orphaned cousins could 
afford, — a consideration that had just as much weight 
with the well-to-do public of that day as with the 
selfish masses of our own, who shudder at the stories 
of the “sweater’s” selfish tyranny, but keep right on 
buying his cheapened goods, just the same. 

It was largely on account of this ungenerous rivalry, 
that Roxy had set her wits to the task of inventing a 
new braid, — something at once pretty and inexpensive, 
that ‘ ‘ cousin Dorindy ’ ’ would find it impossible to 
imitate. 

Not even Prue dreamed of the sleepless hours 


i6 


QUEENSHITHE. 


when the toils of the day were over, those patient 
fingers wrought unweariedly in the dim silence of the 
midnight hours, plaiting and re-plaiting the delicate 
wisps of oaten straw, oftimes baffled and disheartened, 
yet plucking up fresh courage from each failure, until, 
after long weeks of patient experimenting, the per- 
fected work appeared in a bonnet of the finest straw, 
filmy and delicate as a bit of lacework, and braided in 
a pattern so intricate that, when tastefully trimmed, 
and mounted in triumph above Prue’s sunny curls, the 
little maiden cried delightedly : 

“Why Roxy! I really believe you must a’ got the 
spiders to help you, — nobody ever braided anything 
so much like a cobweb before.” 

That cousin Dorindy would do her best to find out 
the secret of the new braid, Roxy well knew, and she 
was not in the least surprised when that very Monday 
morning, before the dew was fairly off the grass, a 
slim genteel figure, with a green silk calash pushed 
back from her faded but still unwrinkled face, and a 
pair of restless, light lashed eyes, whose furtive 
glances took in every detail of the modest household 
arrangements, walked composedly up the footway^ 
and without the ceremony of knocking, entered the 
kitchen where Roxy was at work, and dropping into 
a convenient chair, remarked, with the sigh that 
usually prefaced any special communication that she 
might have to make, and which Sewell declared was 
always used as a blind for some intended meanness, 
just as she dropped the paper curtains of her bed ridden 


PRUE S NEW BONNET. 


17 


old mother’s room before serving her with her meager 
allowance of hasty pudding and molasses : 

“Well, well, Roxy! hard at it as usual, I see. 
Whose that hat you’re doin now, eh? ” 

Roxy smiled and nodded a kindly welcome: 

“This? Why, it’s for one o’ the Barstow boys. 
I’ve got two to do for them, and I don’t know whether 
Ben or Sam ’ll have this one.’’ 

“ Oh — um-m! You ain’t got no orders yet, I take 
it, f’r one o’ them flimsy things that Prue had on 
Sunday? I’m afraid folks generally won’t take to it, 
— something more substantial and respectable lookin’ 
su s the folks round here better. I heard one o’ the 
neighbors say, (I won’t call names so’s ter make any 
trouble,) that she didn’t really think that a braid like 
that, that you could almost see your head through, 
was what you might call exactly modest. ’ ’ 

There was mockery, spite, and underlying all, a 
keen curiosity in tone and look that made Roxy, stout 
hearted as she was, feel a sudden sinking of her cour- 
age, in the presence of this unscrupulous, determined 
woman who, she well knew, would, while pretending 
to decry the new braid, leave no stone unturned to find 
out the secret of its manufacture, for her own profit. 

But she would be very cautious and prudent, nothing 
should tempt her to part with her precious secret, so 
she shut her lips tightly for a moment, before she re- 
plied in her most matter of fact tone to her visitor’s 
leading question, prudently ignoring the malicious 
hint, which was, without doubt a pure fabrication of 
the speaker’s own brain: 


i8 


QUEENSHITHE. 


“ Oh no, of course not. It’s hardly time yet for 
folks to be thinkin’ of getting their summer bunnits 
out.” 

The widow fidgetted uneasily in her chair, and when 
she spoke again her tone was much more conciliatory: 

“ I don’t want to pry into other folk’s affairs, (you 
know, yerself, Roxy, that I ain’t that kind of a 
woman), but seein’ we’re related so, would you mind 
tellin’ me where you learned to do that braid ? ’ ’ 

Roxy’s dark eyes shone with innocent triumph, as 
she tapped her own forehead suggestively: 

“There, — where I most generally go for my new 
notions.” Her companion stared in open mouthed 
amazement. 

“ Are you sure that Sol. Barden’s wife didn’t give 
you jest a hint to start on, eh ? ” 

“Mis Barden ain’t got back from her last voyage 
yet.” The girl’s tone was so sharply indignant, that 
her suspicious neighbor saw that she had gone too far, 
and secretly resolved to be more wary in the handling 
of this proudly honest nature. “ I don’t pass off other 
folk’s inventions for my own,” she went on, with 
heighted color. “ I’d just as soon pretend that Cap’n 
Barden’s garden belonged to me, because it happened 
to be next mine, and help myself to his fruits and 
vegetables when he and his wife was away, as to claim 
credit for something that I didn’t think out my own 
self ’ ’ 

Ordinarily the girl would have disdained the use of 
this weapon, (significantly called by the country folks, 


prue’s new bonnet. 


19 


a “ twit,”) but she knew instinctively that this smooth- 
tongued woman would prove no mean antagonist, and 
that if she would guard her own rights, she could not 
afford to be nice in her choice of a missile. And 
really, Dorinda’s appropriation of her absent neighbor’s 
fruits and vegetables had been so open and shameless, 
that perhaps a hint upon the subject might prove a 
timely warning to her. But curiously enough, the 
guilty party showed not the least sign of confusion or 
anger. 

“Well — well!” she responded, in her slow, half 
indifferent fashion. “ I wouldn’t a’ thought you 
had so much gumption in you, — but the Raes was 
always reckoned above the average as far as head work 
was concerned. And now, I s’ pose, seein’ you’ve in- 
vented the braid, you’ll want something for learnin’ 
other folks how to do it ? I wouldn’t mind payin’ you 
a good, fair price, — say a dollar, or, well, I wouldn’t 
mind seven an’ sixpence, — jest to get so that I could 
braid a bunnit f’r myself.” 

Roxy’s cheeks burned hotly, but her voice was 
very calm and steady as she replied : 

“I’m not going to learn anybody how to do it, at 
any price. It’s my property, and is going to be my 
living, and I never shall sell or give it away while I 
live, and need it myself. ’ ’ 

Mrs. Jeff was silent for a few minutes, playing 
nervously with the fringe of her shawl, and keeping 
her eyes bent upon the floor, evidently in deep thought, 
then suddenly fixing her keen eyes upon her com- 
panion’s face, she whispered persuasively: 


20 


QUEENSHITHE. 


“ Look here, Roxy! I’ve always taken an interest 
in you, seein’ you’re my own cousin’s child, and I 
don’t mind runnin’ considerable risk to help you along. 
Now I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll take you into com- 
pany with me in the straw braidin’ business, (jest think 
o’ that!) and I’ll supply the money, and you the work, 
— that is, you’ll show me how to braid this new kind, 
— (the others I know ,') — and we’ll work it together, 
and divide the profits even.” 

“ Do you mean that you’ll take me into company in 
every thhig , — learn me how to bleach and press straw, 
and trim, if I’ll show you how to do this braid, and 
then divide the profits with me ? ’ ’ 

Mrs. Jeflf threw up her hands with an involuntary 
gesture of amazement at such unheard of audacity. 

“ F’r King George’s sake, child, what are you 
thinkin’ of? I don’t calculate to give away my trade 
to anybody, and I shouldn’t think you’d dream of sech 
a thing. ’Twas only in the straw braidin’ that we’d 
be in company, of coursed 
Roxy laughed outright. 

“I can do better than that alone , she declared 
frankly. “ My straw costs me next to nothing, and I 
had rather have all than half of what I can earn. So 
I guess we won’t go into business together, yet awhile. ’ ’ 
A strange look that the speaker failed to compre- 
hend, passed swiftly over the elder woman’s face, but 
there was no anger, only something of natural disap- 
pointment in her tone and manner, as she rose to leave, 
with: 


prue’s new bonnet. 


21 

‘ ‘ Oh well ! do as you think best. 1 shan’ t crowd 
my advice nor help on nobody. ’ ’ And putting her 
head in at the door, as she stood upon the step outside, 
she called back good naturedly: “If you and Prue 
find yerselves overrun with work, I can lend you Peg 
for a few days, jest as well as not, — the lazy little 
shirk’ll be better’ n nobody.” 

Roxy hesitated, but Prue cried impulsively: 

“ Oh yes, cousin Dorindy, do let her come. We’d 
be ever so glad to have her. ’ ’ 

“Poor little thing! ” she added in an aside, “ I’ll be 
glad to give her all she wants to eat f’r once, and 
there won’t be nobody here to box her ears, or shut 
her up in a dark closet if she dares to ask for a second 
slice of bread.” 

And wondering a little at her sister’s unwonted 
silence, she went back to her work, with a pleasant 
sense of relief that cousin Dorindy’ s visit was so well 
over, and that, as she innocently imagined, Roxy and 
she had parted on the most friendly terms, in spite of 
the former’s refusal to reveal the secret of the new 
braid. Simple little Prue! How should she suspect 
that, even in the proffered loan of Peg’s services there 
might lurk some sinister purpose ? And her shrewder 
sister, even if she mistrusted the seeming kindness, 
refrained from troubling the child with her formless 
suspicions. 

The widow’s visit proved however, but the begin- 
ning of annoyances, for, as Roxy had foreseen, appli- 
cants to learn the mystery of the new braid were 


22 


QUEENSHITHE- 


numberless. Neighbors from near, and strangers from 
afar, made it in their way during the next few weeks, 
to drop in upon the Raes, in quest of a few directions 
for a bonnet for self, daughter, cousin or neighbor, to 
be gotten up after the fashion of Prue’s new headgear. 
According to their various natures, some frankly 
asked her to teach them the braid, and, when refused 
just as frankly acknowledged her right to keep it for 
her own use and profit alone; others tried by rounda- 
bout hints, — flattered, coaxed, and even quoted Scrip- 
ture in support of the theory that, while the product 
of a man’s hands is his own by inalienable right, the 
product of his brain should be freely bestowed upon 
the world at large, without money and without price. 

To say that Roxy, unselfish and obliging by nature 
as by habit, was insensible to the disapproving words 
and frowns of her disappointed visitors, or oblivious of 
the temporary coolness of some whom she had counted 
as among her best friends, would be unnatural as well 
as untrue. Many a time her tender heart was grieved, 
and her honest pride humiliated by the unkind remarks 
of old customers, who could see nothing but an 
uncalled for meanness in her refusal to share this valu- 
able secret of her trade with them. Still, having to a 
certain extent anticipated this trial, she had fortified 
herself with a courage born only of unselfish love, and 
for the sake of the dear ones dependent upon her, she 
was able to bear with patience a blame that, her own 
good sense told her, would soon be forgotten when 
her motives were more generally understood and 
appreciated. 


PRUE S NEW BONNET. 


23 


To understand this flurry of indignant surprise on 
the part of the kind hearted townsfolk, we must 
remember that, in the years succeeding the Revolu- 
tion, money was scarce, and manufactures of all kinds 
in their infancy, so that the farmer’s wives and daugh- 
ters in the outlying hamlets of New England were 
forced to exercise their taste and ingenuity in a hun- 
dred ways that, to the humblest of our own day, are 
entirely unnecessary. Among these the braiding of 
straw was no insignificant occupation, and if one 
added the skill to bleach and re-trim the time worn 
headgear that served the dames and maidens for best, 
the year round, she was really a very important factor 
in the community, and was supposed, in return for 
their custom, to give them all the hints and helps in her 
line that she was able, — “ it would cost her nothing,” 
they reasoned, “just to give a body a few directions 
that would save their hiring their work done.” And 
nobody dreamed that, in the claiming of these neigh- 
borly helps as a right, they were actually defrauding 
the donor of her right to make a living by her taste 
and skill. 

Thus Mrs. Jeff, although personally unpopular, was 
a woman of considerable influence among the feminine 
portion of the community, who looked upon her as 
the high priestess of fashion in the way of headgear, 
and it was really a refreshment to the simple souls to 
hear her discourse upon the latest ‘ ‘ styles, ’ ’ and watch 
her nimble fingers as they twisted and puckered odds 
and ends of ribbon into tasty knots and bows, that 


24 


QUEENSHITHE. 


always obeyed her will, standing up, tall and pert as 
the red and yellow holyhocks outside her window, or 
more modestly clinging to the bonnet, like broad 
winged butterflies, just as the fashion of the day in 
Bestport demanded. 

With a monopoly of the bleaching and trimming, 
she had been content to see Roxy monopolize the 
larger share of the braiding, and it was not until this 
invention of her ingenious cousin, had aroused her to 
the possible profits to be found in that branch of the 
business, that she had really considered it worth her 
while to assume the position of a rival. 

But that this new and dainty invention bade fair to 
drive the old stand-bys out of the field completely, 
Mrs. Jeff was shrewd enough to forsee, and with this 
thought, all her natural cupidity was awakened, and a 
determination to get at least a share of the coveted 
gains, by fair means or by foul, fully possessed her. 
It would be no wrong to Roxy, — indeed, she half per- 
suaded herself that she was doing a handsome thing 
by the girl in offering to take her into partnership, as 
the price of getting an insight into the mystery of her 
invention. Her rooms were larger and more genteel, 
so that more of the well-to-do neighbors would be sure 
to patronize the new firm. And if, after the first 
season, she should conclude not to keep up the con- 
nection, why, Roxy would be none the worse off for a 
whole season under her supervision. It would be con- 
siderable trouble having her round, for Granny would 
be furious, (she hated the very name of Rae,) and like 


PRUE S NEW BONNET. 


25 


as not Peg would be getting uppish, knowing that she 
could run to her with all her tales. But one must 
expect to put up with something in the way of busi- 
ness, and for relation’s sake she was willing to give the 
girl a chance to get a good business training, that 
would be worth more than money to her in the years 
to come. 

All this reasoning sounded very plausible when re- 
hearsed in the privacy of her own bedchamber, with 
only the silent stars peeping between the folds of her 
gorgeous copperplate curtain, for listeners. But some- 
how, with Roxy’s clear, honest eyes upon her, the 
arguments that she had meant to use sounded strangely 
one sided, and she angrily wondered at herself, as she 
walked thoughtfully homeward, that she had given up 
the partnership plan so easily, while, almost uncon- 
sciously, a meaner, still more selfish scheme began 
gradually to take form and shape in her active brain, 
— a scheme that had no pretence of benevolence in it, 
even to her, but was really excusable as a just (?) re- 
taliation for the girl’s ingratitude and meanness in re- 
fusing to part with her secret to her, her nearest kins- 
woman and would-be benefactress. 


CHAPTER II. 


MY LADY GREATHEART. 

HAT a poor, little forlorn mite it was, — ragged 



vv unkempt, and with the lithe, shy motions of 
some only half domesticated wild animal, in whose 
veins the savage blood of uncounted generations finds 
it hard to mingle with a later and gentler strain. 
Indeed, Mrs. Jeff had always insisted that the black 
hair and eyes, the dusky cheek — through which the 
warm crimson of health and happiness never shone, — 
as well as the stealthy step and low voice, were all sure 
indications that her small handmaiden had Indian blood 
in her veins, an imputation that Peg herself indignantly 
denied. Didn’ t everybody in town know her Cana- 
dian mother who, widowed and penniless, had drifted 
to this out of the way corner, to die, and be buried by 
the town, whose authorities had promptly disposed of 
her six-year-old child by “binding” her, until her 
majority, to Mrs. Jeff. That this thrifty matron had, 
during the seven years that had elapsed since then, 
contrived to get an amount of drudgery out of the 
unfortunate waif, that would have seemed incredible to 
a kinder and more compassionate mistress, everybody 
in town knew, by intuition if not by actual observation. 

Half clothed and fed, and constantly subjected to 


prue’s new bonnet. 


27 


the petty tyranny of a mean, hard tempered woman, 
it is somewhat surprising that the child never com- 
plained of the treatment accorded her, even to the 
children of her own age, with whom she associated 
during the few weeks of school that her hard mistress 
was forced by law to allow her. Instead, she showed 
a wonderful shrewdness in eluding the questionings of 
the village matrons who, one and all, would have been 
only too glad to get some new proof of their unpopu- 
lar neighbor’s meanness, to talk about among them- 
selves. More than once, it was whispered, the child 
had actually refused proflfered food at the hands of 
those who had seen her eagerly devouring bits of bread 
thrown to the hens, insisting that she did not need it. 

It was a queer kind of pride, and few would have 
understood, even if Peg had condescended to explain 
to them, the inborn feeling of honor that forbade her 
holding up to scorn the woman whose bread she ate 
from day to day, even though that bread was of the 
poorest and scantiest, and seasoned with the bitter 
herbs of grudged dependence. 

Only Roxy Rae and her gentle hearted sister had 
the smallest conception of what the child really en- 
dured, both mentally and physically, for it was to them 
alone that she showed the real side of a nature, proud, 
tender, patient, with a poetic instinct, flashing out at 
unlooked for times, in queer, wayward fancies, that 
even Roxy, sympathetic but matter of fact, often found 
herself mystified and bewildered by. 

On a pleasant morning in May, not long after Mrs. 


28 


QUEENSHITHE. 


Jeff's memorable visit to her young cousins, the 
*' borrowed peg,” as Prue laughingly called her, sat in 
the pleasant, sunshiny kitchen of the Rae farmhouse, 
plaiting with deft fingers one of the coarse straw hats 
for which Roxy had taken an order months before, 
but which, owing to the time spent upon Prue’s new 
bonnet, was now considerably overdue. 

Stopping now and then to take a bite from the big 
piece of delicious ‘ ‘ spider cake ’ ’ that Prue had 
dropped into her lap, giving her no chance to refuse 
the unwonted dainty, even if she had been so disposed, 
the child chatted as freely and blithely as if the rare 
privilege of speaking without the fear of rebuke, had 
something exhilerating in its sense of mental freedom, 
apart from the glad consciousness that, for a few happy 
days at least she would be free from the hated censor- 
ship of her harsh mistress, and enjoying the society of 
the only beings in the world about whom her chilled 
affections could find room to cling. 

‘ ‘ There goes ‘ Mr. Legality, ' ’ ’ she remarked 
gravely, as a portly, middle-aged man strode leisurely 
along the highway, in full view from the open door. 

Prue stared. 

“Why, that's Squire Biddle,” she said, craning her 
neck to get a better look at the passing figure. 
“ What did yon call him, Peg? ” 

“‘Mr. Legality,' — the man that helps people get 
rid of their burdens, by either pretendin’ that they 
don’t have any, or else that they was too light to make 
any account of,” persisted the child, with a shrewd 


prue’s new bonnet. 


29 


twinkle in her black eyes. ‘ ‘ Didn’ t you ever read 
about him in the ‘ Pilgrim’s Progress? ’ ” 

“ Why yes, to be sure,” returned Prue, the puzzled 
frown still wrinkling her smooth forehead, “but what 
do you know about the book ? ’ ’ 

“ I know all about it,” was the ready reply. “ Mis 
Jeff, she lets me have that and the Bible to read Sun- 
days, so’t I can learn all about my sins, and what’s 
likely ter happen to me if I don’t mend my ways. 
Sometimes Granny’ll let me read ’er to sleep with the 
‘ Progress,’ — she always wants to hear about old ‘ Raw 
Head' and ‘Bloody Bones,’ she says they kind o’ 
quiet ’er down when she’s nervous. Why,” warming 
with her subject, “I can pick out most all the folks 
right round here, — there’s lots an’ lots of ’em right in 
the neighborhood. ’ ’ 

Both girls were by this time greatly interested, for 
that wonderful allegory that, so long as the road to the 
Celestial City is trodden by the feet of Heavenward 
bound pilgrims, will never lose its charm, was really 
the only book containing a grain of poetry or romance 
that the strict literary censorship of the day and neigh- 
borhood allowed to youthful readers. 

“Tell us about some of them, Peggy dear,” coaxed 
Prue, and as Roxy added her: 

“Yes, do, Peggy.” 

The child went on with her quaint imaginings: 

“There’s old Cap’n Dickory, he’s ‘Talkative,’ — 
you know what ‘ Faithful ’ said about him ? 


30 


QUEENSHITHE. 


‘ How Talkative at first lifts up his plumes, 

How bravely doth he speak, how he presumes 
To drive down all before him.’ ” 

“Sure enough!” laughed Roxy, “that’s the old 
man to a T, — he never lets anybody get in a word 
edgewise when he’s round. But what do you call his 
wife? She can’t be Mis’ Talkative, for she never 
dares to peep before him. ’ ’ 

“She’s Mrs. Much-afraid,” retorted the midget, so 
promptly that it was evident that the poor woman’s 
place had been already assigned her in Peg’s quaint 
picture gallery. “Deacon Walcott is ‘ Mr. Despond- 
ency,’ and Nat Graves is ‘ Simple-mind.’” 

“ Why ? ” queried both girls in a breath. 

“Because he can’t see what ‘My Lady Feigning,’ 
— (that’s the widder Jeff,) is up to, with her smooth 
words, and her smiles, and her callin’ him in every 
time he goes by, to ask his advice about the farm work. 
Ugh! he’s a green one though, and she, — ” 

Roxy cast a warning glance at her sister, who was 
all atiptoe with a girl’s mischievous curiosity to ferret 
out a possible love affair, but checking herself at the 
mute reminder, she only asked innocently: 

“ And who am I, Peg ? ” 

“You? oh, you’re ‘Mercy,’ because Mercy, you 
know, ‘ was of a fair and alluring countenance.’ ” 

Prue blushed and laughed, while her sister asked 
curiously: 

“ And yourself, Peggy ? ’ ’ 

“I’m only the ‘damsel whose name was Humble- 
mind,’ and you are ‘ My Lady Greatheart.’ ” 


prue’s new bonnet. 


31 


“What an idea!” cried Roxy. “What, in the 
world, ever possessed you to give me such a name as 
that?” 

The child dropped her work upon her lap, and 
looked long and lovingly into the brave, kindly face 
of her one friend and champion. 

“ Ain’t you the only one that’s ever dared to stand 
between me an’ Mis’ Jeff in her tantrums ? ” 

Her voice trembled, and almost broke into tears as 
she put the question, while the conscious color crept 
to Roxy’s dark cheek, and involuntary she lifted her 
hand, as if to ward off this undesired reminder of a 
bitterly cruel scene that she, on her part, would gladly 
have forgotten. 

“ Didn’t you put me behind you, just as Greatheart 
did the poor little children, when Giant Grim come 
out against ’em? and didn’t you tell her that if she 
struck me a single blow with that rollin’ -pin you’d 
complain of ’er to the town authorities ? ” 

“Oh, well — well,” stammered the girl, as shame- 
faced at hearing this story of her brave defence of the 
helpless re-told, as if it had been something to her 
discredit. “ It’s best to let bye-gones be bye-gones. 
And as to that, I didn’t do no different from what 
anybody’ d a’ done under the circumstances. Dorin- 
dy’s temper was up, and she didn’t more’n half realize 
what she was doing; and then, Peggy, child, — thee 
knows thyself, that thy speech was not befitting a maid 
to her mistress. ’ ’ 

Roxy never took advantage of the dialect that, 


32 


QUEENSHITHE. 


throughout her childish years, had been the familiar 
mode of speech in the home of her Quaker grand- 
parents, with whom much of her time was spent, except 
as now, to soften some not to be evaded reproof, or 
possibly, when under great excitement, that she might 
express herself more forcibly in what was really her 
mother-tongue. 

Prue’s cheek dimpled mischievously, while Peg, not 
a whit abashed at the gentle reproof, tilted a saucy 
nose in the air, and went on with her braiding as com- 
posedly as if this little outburst of grateful love, so 
foreign to her usual shy reticence, was nothing more 
than a stray gleam of sunshine upon some shaded pool, 
a sudden glint, then lost in the original darkness as 
completely as if it had never been. 

It was only when the young house-mother, after the 
work of the day was over, gathered her little brood 
about her, in the sweet, purple twilight, and in her 
simple, trusting fashion, besought the protection and 
blessing of the Father of the fatherless, not only for 
her own dear ones but for the friendless little stranger 
within her gates, that Peg again referred to the con- 
versation of the morning, and then it was in a whispered 
aside, that might mean much or nothing, at any rate 
Roxy took little note of it except to smile at its quaint 
mysteriousness. 

“ Look here, Roxy! Old mother ‘ Bat’s Eyes ’ says 
that Dorindy never forgets a grudge, and that she’s 
sure to pay her debts of that kind, sooner or later, 
with interest; — so you jest look out.” 


prue’s new bonnet. 


33 


The name applied so fittingly to Doriiidy’s bedridden 
old grandmother, that in laughing at the queer conceit, 
Roxy failed to notice the underlying hint of her kins- 
woman’s secret enmity to hersetf. And as, during the 
remaining days of her stay, Peg herself made no 
farther allusion to the matter, it passed completely 
from her mind, or was casually recalled by some one 
of the odd speeches with which the child loved to 
interlay her lively chatter, when, encouraged by Prue, 
she gave free rein to her whimsical conceits and 
fancies. 

And now the thrifty little woman had enough to 
occupy her thoughts as well as her hands, for the new 
bonnet had, as she hoped, proved a good advertise- 
ment of her invention, and from far and near came 
orders, even from those who had been the loudest in 
denouncing what they had called her “stinginess” in 
refusing to share her secret with the public generally. 

‘ ‘ The girls was such fools, that nothin’ would do 
but they must have bunnits of that kind o’ braid,” 
was the half grudging explanation that usually accom- 
panied the order, for the new “ Martha Jeffersons,” — 
(as Roxy had shrewdly christened her braid, ) soon 
became so popular that, in spite of her own unwearied 
exertions, and the help of the children, — for even 
Sewell had been pressed into the service, — she found 
it all that she could do, by working early and late, to 
supply the demand. 

“Why don’t you take a prentice?” suggested a 
neighbor, who had dropped in for an hour’s friendly 


34 


QUEENSHITHE. 


gossip. “ There’s plenty of good, smart girls that ’d 
jump at the chance.” 

Roxy drew one of the crisp, shining straws through 
her slender fingers irresolutely. 

“That would be giving away the secret,” she said, 
with a little heightening of her color, for she was not 
yet quite reconciled to the charge of meanness, that 
she still heard now and then, from some discontented 
body, who could only see her own side of the question. 
“I’ve made more in the few weeks that I’ve worked 
on this braid, than I ever made in a whole year before 
on the plain straw work. So you see I can’ t afford to 
learn the art to anybody else, and run the risk of their 
settin’ up in opposition to me.” 

“To be sure, — I never thought of that. But why 
don’t you get a patent on it? That’d make it unlaw- 
ful for anybody to take it up on their own hook with- 
out payin’ you for the privilege. Then you could 
take all the prentices you wanted to, and I don’t see 
any reason why you couldn’t build up a big business 
in time.” 

To this the girl made no reply. She was too com- 
pletely dazed by such an unheard of idea to know 
what to say. That she, a woman, should venture to 
apply for a patent, and all for a new braid of straw! 
The idea was preposterous, and for a moment, she 
really thought that her friend must be joking. To be 
sure, there was Elmer Smith who got a patent for his 
new mill wheel; and Major Herrick had applied for 
one on a new plow that he had invented. But they 


prue’s new bonnet. 


35 


were men^ and their inventions were of consequence to 
the country at large. Such a thing as a woman’s in- 
venting anything worth the government’s notice had 
never even been heard of, and Roxy felt her cheeks 
burn with modest shame at her own temerity in de- 
bating such a question, even for a moment. So she 
humbly put it aside with all the other impracticable 
bits of friendly counsel with which her good neighbors 
were so inconveniently lavish, and applied herself to 
her work with a cheery devotion, that cared little for 
fatigue or personal inconvenience so long as her plans 
for those she loved seemed in a fair way of being ful- 
filled. 

Peg’s stay at the cottage, owing to the unusual press 
of work, had been lengthened from days into weeks, 
and trusting to her honest loyalty, Roxy had taken no 
pains to keep her handiwork hidden from those sharp 
eyes, that took in everything from the preparation of 
the straw down to the delicate final touches that were 
needful to give the braid its superior sheen and finish. 

“/ can help on that,” the child proudly announced 
one day as Roxy hesitated over an order that must be 
finished in a given time, “I’ve watched how it’s done, 
and I can do it just as well as you can, and a good 
deal better than Prue^ 

The sisters looked at each other in silent consterna- 
tion. 

“You know. Peg,” and Roxy spoke with a stern- 
ness unusual with her, ‘ ‘ that I have refused to show 
anybody how to make this braid, and now you have ” 


36 


QUEENSHITHE. 


— she would have said “stolen it/* but the appealing 
look checked her, — and she finished her sentence with 
the less harsh, “found it out, without my consent.” 

Astonishment, pain, and a blush of intense mortifi- 
cation passed by turns over the dusky face, while the 
eyes that were uplifted to her friend’s troubled face, 
glistened with a moisture rarely seen in their dark, 
unfathomable depths. 

“Why Roxy! didn’t you know that I was trying to 
learn so that I could help you ? I wouldn’t tell any- 
body else how ’twas done, f’r the world, — I’d die 
first. ’ ’ 

Roxy’s brow cleared, and she patted kindly the 
rough, dark head at her knee. 

“ I don’t believe you would, — at any rate I aint 
afraid to trust you. Only,” — in a compassionate 
rather then apprehensive tone, ‘ ‘ it would have been a 
good deal better for you^ not to have learned how to 
braid the pattern, for then, you could have told Dor-^ 
indy truthfully that you could’ nt show her how ’twas 
done, if she should take it into her head to question 
you about it. ’ ’ 

A look passed over the childish face that Roxy 
never forgot, — a look such as one of the Christian 
martyrs might have worn when listening to the growls 
of the caged lion that was so soon to lap his blood: 

‘ ‘ I never will tell her, if she starves and beats 
me to death, no, not even if she ties me up by my 
thumbs, as she did that time that Granny told her 
that I stole a half-dollar of the money that the old 


prue’s new bonnet. 


37 


witch keeps in a bag in bed with her. I fainted dead 
away, and I guess she was pretty scart, for she aint 
never tried it since, — (only she does pull hair awful^ 
when her grit’s up.”) Roxy’s heart grew' hot within 
her at this childish revelation of her kinswoman’s cruel 
tyranny, but it was the fashion of her day never to 
criticize its elders in a child’s hearing, so she only 
asked, with a clumsy attempt at the discreet coolness 
of an unprejudiced listener; 

‘ ‘ Did she ever find the money ? ’ ’ 

“Oh law, yes ! ’twas inside the straw tick, where, 
it had worked itself in when the bed was being made 
up, some time. Something else she found there too, 
but how thit got there she could’ nt guess, and if 
Granny knew, she wouldn’t tell.” 

‘ ‘ What was that ? ’ ’ 

Peg drew a long breath at the remembrance. 

“ ’Twas a paper, folded lengthways, and had a lot 
of writing on it. Miss Jeff just about flew into flinders 
over it, and Granny tried hard to make ’er burn it up. 
But I guess she didn’t quite darst to, though once she 
held it so close to the candle that she scorched the 
edges, and Granny all the time bawlin : 

“ Burn it, Dorindy, you fool! burn it, I say! ” 

“But she didn’t after all, — thought better on’t, I 
guess, and finally she locked it up in that old secretary 
where her husband used ter keep his papers. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ What could it have been ? ’ ’ questioned both 
girls in a breath, but Peg shook her head ignorantly: 

‘ ‘ I dunno. Only one thing I do know, and that is. 


38 


QUEENSHITHE. 


that Granny must ’a got hold of it before she was bed- 
ridden, and that’s two years ago come Christmas. 
You know she had ’er shock just after Hackett died, 
and that was the first of December. Whatever ’twas, 
that was Miss Jeff ’s first squint at it, and a terrible 
wommblecropt woman she was when she read it. You 
remember Hackett, and that he wa’ant one much given 
to talkin over his affairs to anybody, — not even to his 
wife.” 

Yes Roxy remembered only too well the little, bent- 
shouldered, cold eyed man who, at their father’s death, 
had produced a mortgage, covering all the hard 
earned acres that Elton Rae had hoped to leave as a 
heritage to his orphaned children, who were thus 
thrown upon their own resources, with only the cover 
of their humble roof for a shelter, and the produce of 
a by no means large vegetable garden to supply their 
actual necessities. Their only cow had been sold to 
pay the dead man’s funeral expenses, while of the half 
dozen sheep, one after another had gone to the 
shambles to provide for the wants of the now unde- 
fended household. It was a bitter memory, but the girl 
recalled, with pardonable pride, the fact that she had 
refused the offered help of the town, and by her own 
energy and foresight, had provided a comfortable if 
humble maintenance for herself and the younger 
children, thus she was able to think forgivingly of the 
dead, even adding a word of commendation: 

“Cousin Jeff was always good to Granny, — she 
lost a good friend when he died.” 


prue’s new bonnet. 


39 


“ Two of a trade! of course they ^greedy*’ muttered 
Peg, whose remembrance of the deceased was not 
calculated to greatly prejudice her in his favor. 

“ They’d either of ’em skin a flea f ’r his hide an 
taller. Mis’ Jeff, she’s mean enough in all conscience, 
but she couldn’t hold a candle to either of them.” 

“ Granny’s childish,” returned Roxy apologetically. 
“ Now, when we were little, and father was alive, she 
seemed to think a sight of us, but since she had her 
shock, she can’t bear the sight of us. Sickness and 
old age have changed her a good deal.” 

Peg pursed up her mouth knowingly, but she made 
no farther comment. Indeed, in recalling afterward 
her revelations in regard to the mysterious paper, 
Roxy wondered not a little at the unwonted freedom 
with which she discussed the Hacketts, a freedom so 
different from her usual reticence when speaking of the 
widow and her whimsical, half demented old mother. 
Dorindy wouldn’ t like it at all if she should happen to 
find out that the child had spoken so freely even to 
them, and she was careful to caution Prue against re- 
peating any of her indiscreet revelations, a caution 
that that young lady rather resented as implying a 
doubt of her own prudence and shrewdness. 

“ Do you suppose I’d tell anything that would get 
that poor little dot into trouble ? ’ ’ she cried. ‘ ‘ But, 
honestly, Roxy, if the s’lectmen knew how Dorindy 
abuses her, they’d take her away from her right off.” 

“There aint no doubt of that, — but who, do you 
suppose would take it upon themselves to tell them ? 


40 


QUEENSHITHE. 


Nobody’ d want to get Dorindy’s ill will, and she’s one 
of the largest tax-payers in town, so the town officers 
wouldn’t be in too great a hurry to believe the story if 
they should hear it. ’ ’ 

Prue sighed dismally. 

‘ ‘ Seems to me the poorer you are, and most in need 
of help of the law, the less likely you are to get it.” 

‘ ‘ Oh no ! ” interrupted Roxy, too loyal to bear this 
imputation upon the laws of her beloved land in silence. 
“It aint with us as ’tis in countries governed by a 
king, — one man here is just as good as another in the 
eyes of the law, only riches give anybody an advantage 
of course y anywhere. Father used to say that this 
chance for every man to get riches for himself, no 
matter how poor he was born, was the one thing that 
was going to make us the biggest and richest nation in 
the world.” 

“Will it make us the best and happiest, too?” 
queried Prue childishly. 

‘ ‘ Of course it will. Aint our government the very 
best in the world, and aint we got the very best and 
wisest men to run it ? ” 

And Roxy settled herself contentedly to her work, 
serenely smiling as she thought of the utter impossi- 
bility of a government by the people for the people, 
proving anything but a glorious success in every de- 
partment, and for all ages to come. 


CHAPTER III. 


A “BILL FOR BURYIN’.” 

HAT the “ widder Jeff” was never absent from 



1 the weekly prayer meeting was no proof of her 
piety, nor, on the other hand, of her spiritual insin- 


cerity. 


It is easy, and therefore common, to brand those 
whose profession and practice fail to agree, as hypo- 
crites, whose aim is to cheat the world into believing 
them vastly better than they really are, but what about 
the self deceptions that these people almost invariably 
practice ? 

When Mrs. Jeff stood up in prayer meeting, and in 
the meek and reverent tones befitting the place and 
occasion, confessed her short-comings, and expressed 
her desire to be in all things a humble follower of the 
Christ, did she for a moment realize that the whole 
end and aim of her life was in direct opposition to his 
oft repeated, and earnestly emphasized teachings, of 
service to God through unselfish love toward our 
fellow man ? 

When her not unmusical voice joined devoutly in 
the hymns of praise that, for the time being, lent the 
sanctity of a temple to the little, low school-room, 
with its hacked and dingy desks, faintly illumined by 


42 


QUEENSHITHE. 


the light of the one or two whale oil lamps upon the 
reader’ s table, did she remember to contrast her own 
selfish and sordid plans and purposes with the grand 
ideal of self renunciation expressed in her favorite 
“ O thou who hast our sorrows borne,” 

Never, in all probability, had the thought even 
occurred to her that the religion worn so fittingly with 
her best bonnet, had anything to do with the days 
when that old green calash was a suitable and con 
venient head covering. 

The truth is, we each and all of us have a choice 
little vocabulary contrived especially for our own use 
and benefit, wherein certain faults and meannesses, 
vices even, peculiar to our own character, drape them- 
selves in such innocent guise that they actually hood- 
wink their possessor himself into thinking them 
allowable weaknesses, if not actual virtues. 

Thus, Mrs. Jeffs grasping selfishness might assume 
to her partial eye the character of a self-protective in- 
stinct, especially needful to a woman in her mateless 
condition; meanness paraded as that most popular of 
New England virtues — thrift; while the persistency 
with which she clung to any project for her own indi- 
vidual advancement, regardless of the rights or feel- 
ings of others, showed a talent for business as rare as 
it was admirable, at a time when, haggling with a 
traveling tin peddler over the comparative worth of 
paper rags and tinware, was really almost the only 
field in which the New England matron could allow 
her business faculties even a casual curvet. 


prue’s new bonnet. 


43 


That the little world about our thrifty widow was 
not so blind to her faults goes without saying, and as 
Nathan Graves, a well-to-do bachelor farmer, whose 
home was just outside the village, and adjoining one 
of the valuable pieces of property belonging to the 
deceased Jefferson, sat, watching half unconsciously, 
upon a certain evening in May, the devotional droop 
of that black bonneted head, he caught himself won- 
dering, even during Deacon Potter’s opening prayer, 
if the stories rife among the village folks, of her 
parsimony and ill-temper, were not greatly exagger- 
ated after all ? She was so quiet spoken, so modest 
in her air and dress, and yet, he remembered and 
shuddered, — he was as tender hearted as a young 
maiden, this great, hulking son of toil, — the stories 
of her treatment of the little bound girl, whose shy, 
prematurely sharpened face had always had a pathetic 
interest for him, and when, a little later, he listened 
to the low, carefully modulated tones of the widow, 
as she ‘ ‘ testified ’ ’ as usual, he grew more and more 
puzzled as to which was the real “ widder Jeff,” the 
quiet, black-robed woman of the prayer-meeting, or 
the hard tempered, driving mistress of the best cared 
for farm in the town, whose sharpness at a bargain — 

He sat back sulkily in his hard, narrow seat, and 
glowered with reddened cheeks at a big patch on the 
opposite wall, from which the plaster had fallen, 
leaving the bare lathes gaping like the ribs of an only 
half reconstructed mastodon. 

For the good man had a grievance, and in his eyes 
at least, it was a very large one. 


44 


QUEENSHITHE. 


Among the various offices in town and church to 
which the sensible, clear-headed farmer had been 
called by his appreciative fellow townsmen, was that 
of sexton, and although he had insisted, again and 
again, that the duties were distasteful, and the emol- 
uments ridiculously small, he had never succeeded in 
getting his release from the undesirable office. In 
fact, it was a standing joke with the fun loving 
members of the nominating board, to receive and 
dispose of Nat Graves’ annual “resignation.” 

“You’re the strongest man in town, and there an’t 
another that can dig a grave in as good shape as you 
can, or lay out a body, on occasion, equal to ye, 
So don’t talk o’ resignin’, if you vally the peace o’ 
mind an’ well bein’ o’ yer feller citizens, dead or 
alive. ’ ’ 

This was always the way in which his resignation 
was met, and no matter how hard the poor fellow 
pleaded and argued, he never succeeded in shaking 
off the unwelcome honor (?) thus persistently thrust 
upon him. 

It was hard, for he had a constitutional horror of 
death, and all its grim paraphernalia, while so sympa- 
thetic was his nature, that he never could grow 
callous to the sight of the mourner’s tears, although 
the dead might have been in life one of his greatest 
aversions. 

‘ ‘ I tell you’ ’ he grumbled, one evening, as, after a 
hard day’s work at chopping, in the snow whitened 
forest, he dropped into Deacon Potter’s store for a 


prue’s new bonnet. 


45 


friendly gossip with the village wiseacres who always 
congregated there of a winter evening, ‘ ‘ I tell you 
it’s mighty tough on a feller to have to leave his work 
at everybody’s beck an’ call, an’ spend a good half 
day diggin’ in sile that’s friz down three foot or 
more. ’ ’ 

He spread his great hands to catch the warmth 
from the blazing hemlock logs, and spit with angry 
energy full in the face of one of the unwinking Sara- 
cen’s heads that adorned the iron fire-dogs, while his 
listeners nodded intelligently. 

‘ ‘ Who is it ? ” asked one, with suddenly awakened 
interest. 

“ Cross Barker.” 

‘ ‘ Consumption ? ’ ’ 

“No, neumony.” 

‘ ‘ Left anything ? ’ ’ queried a little, rat-faced man, 
with a greater appearance of interest than any of the 
others had shown. 

Nat Graves looked keenly into the face of the 
interlocutor with a smile of quiet contempt upon his 
bearded lips, for a full moment, before he answered 
guardedly : 

“Well — yes. — I guess his widder won’t have to 
call on the town f’r help, yet awhile, at any rate. 
But ’taint a real easy job f’r a weakly woman like 
Mrs. Barker to provide for a growin’ family of seven 
youngsters, and the oldest not more’n twelve year 
old. F’r my part, I never felt worse about buryin’ a 
man than I do him.” 


46 


QUEENSHITHE. 


The little man grinned derisively, 

‘ ‘ So you always say, Nat, ’ ’ he remarked with a 
sneer. “ But why I asked. I’ve got a small bill agin 
’im, and I’m glad ter know that the widder’s good f ’r 
it. Now here’s Nat,” turning to the giant in the cor- 
ner, against whom for some reason, he seemed to have 
a special grudge, ‘ ‘ has the advantage of the rest of 
us, — he gits his pay the first thing, — no dilly-dallyin 
with the sexton, let who will, wait. If a fammerly’s 
poor as Job’s turkey, they’ll pay the bill f’r buryin’ 
if they have ter live on two meals a day , — pride ’ll 
make ’em honest there, if they cheat everybody else 
out o’ their fair dues. ’ ’ 

“ My bill an’t a very hefty one,” grumbled the dis- 
contented Nat, ‘ ‘ two dollars, and I have ter pay a 
man to help me, out o’ that. Grave diggin’ won’t 
never make a man rich, — in these parts, at any rate,” 
he added, a grim smile passing over his weather 
beaten face, and changing into a laugh of genuine 
mirth as he took in at one comprehensive glance the 
diminutive figure and mean proportions of the man 
before him, “ I’ll dig your grave, Jeff, f’r half a dol- 
lar, any time that you say so, if you’ll promise to do 
the same by me, if I go first.” 

He stretched himself upward as he spoke, and the 
contrast between the two was so ludicrously striking 
that everybody laughed uproarously in appreciation of 
the joke, which, grim as it was, seemed very funny to 
these sober-minded, hard-headed men, whose ances- 
tors only a few generations back had found a pilloried 


prue’s new bonnet. 


47 


quaker or a half drowned woman tied to a ducking- 
stool legitimate objects of mirth. The little man alone 
seemed to see no joke in the matter. 

“ Very well/’ he said, glancing sharply about him, 
“ Here’s the Deacon, an’ Ezry Coombs, an’ Humph- 
rey Bridges, an’ the Lane twins, all witnesses of our 
bargain. You can’t back down now, if you want to,” 
he added, with a suspicious hollow cough, that shook 
his meager frame from head to foot, and called from 
the Deacon, after he had left the store, the shrewd 
comment: 

“ I b’lieve Jeff Hackett’s got the consumption, 
true’s you live, and that he knows it, too, which ac- 
counts for his catchin’ at Nat’s ofler, and tryin’ to 
make it appear like a genuine bargain instead of a 
joke.” 

And sure enough, six months later, the village bell 
tolled solemnly the forty-seventh strokes, that an- 
nounced to the listening townspeople that Jefferson 
Hackett had departed this life, ‘ ‘ in hope of a glori- 
ous hereafter,” (the officiating preacher read,) and 
even those whom he had most mercilessly fleeced, had 
not the heart to begrudge that scrap of consolation to 
the one solitary mourner for the dead. 

It was while digging his grave that the scene in the 
Deacon’s store was recalled to the mind of Nat 
Graves, and he laughed rather shamefacedly as he 
brushed the yellow loam from the overalls that covered 
his sturdy nether limbs, and plied his spade with that 
sense of exquisite satisfaction that comes to the toiler 
whose strength is more than sufficient to his task. 


48 


QUEENSHITHE. 


“ I don’t s’ pose twas really a kind thing to do to 
poke fun at the little wassup, and I wouldn’t if I’d 
known what poor health he was enjoyin’ . But I guess, 
on the whole, I’ve got the best end of the bargain.” 

And he pulled his hat lower over his face to hide 
the smile from his fellow worker, for it is one thing to 
laugh at a man when in life, and an altogether differ- 
ent thing to laugh at him when for aught you know, 
his disembodied spirit may be watching you across 
the top of his own headstone. 

But he did not feel at all like smiling, when, on 
presenting his bill to the widow, she calmly reminded 
him of his contract with her deceased lord. 

“ I was only funning,” he explained, considerably 
taken aback at this unexpected resurrection of that 
now unsavory jest, “ I never thought of his takin’ 
me in earnest.” 

“A very queer kind of fun, dryly remarked the 
widow. “You know the saying, that it’s dangerous 
to play with edge tools, and I’d advise you to be a 
little more careful the way you fling your jokes about 
next time. But as f’r the bill. I’ll pay you the half 
dollar agreed upon, and no more, unless,” casting 
down her eyes and softly smoothing out the creases in 
her best black apron, ‘ ‘ unless we can come to some 
kind of an miderstanding late? on.'' 

And honest Nat, as utterly free from guile as the 
“very large, fine bear ” in the story books, accepted 
the words in all good faith, even when they necessi- 
tated numberless social calls, to talk over the matter, 


prue's new bonnet. 


49 


and debate with the ever complacent widow the ques- 
tion of his acceptance of the diminutive sum offered : 

“ It was not,” as he was always careful to explain, 

* ‘ that he was greedy for that extra dollar- and-a-half. 
But a man has the right to be paid fairly for his work, 
whether the job is a large or a small one, and its be- 
littlin’ his own work when he consents to take half of 
what it’s really worth.” 

“But,” reminded the widow, to whom “Poor 
Richard’s ” shrewd maxims never came amiss, “ you 
know the saying, ‘ Half a loaf’s better’ n none.” 

Nat shook his head slowly, doubtfully. He was 
a man whose thoughts were of slow growth, but 
when an idea once got firmly “ set ” in his rugged 
brain, the roots struck and held on. Moreover, he 
was something of a political economist, in a small 
way, and had his own notions of the possibility of 
reconciling the doctrines of Thomas Jefferson with 
those of the Man of Galilee. 

“ I dunno about that — always supposin’ that you’ve 
fairly aimed the whole loaf, and the one that owes it 
to ye is able to pay his just dues. Mebbe it don’t 
make so much difference to me, — ^we’ll allow that, — 
but,” emphasizing with one stubby forefinger upon 
the palm of the other toil-hardened hand, “what 
about the next feller and his quarter loaf? f’r it stan’s 
ter reason that if /don’t have but half a loaf, the man 
next ter me don’t get but a quarter, an the next an 
eighth, and so on, till there’s a mighty small bite left 
for the end man. ’ ’ 


50 


QUEENSHITHE. 


The widow smiled placidly: 

“ That’s the end man’s business, not your’n.” 

“Well, there ’tis again,” and the honest fellow’s 
face took on a shade of deeper feeling, “you know 
the rule that we profess to go by — ‘Whatsoever ye 
would that men should do unto you do ye even so 
unto them, ’ and how you going to reconcile it to yer 
conscience, to butter yer own bread by makin’ yer 
neighbor live on crusts ? Seems to me ’ twould be 
fairer and more Christian like, ’f the times was hard, 
and butter scase, to eat yer loaf withouty ruther’n let 
yer neighbor go hungry. ‘ Live and let live ’ is a 
pretty fair law, accordin’ to my reckon’ , and the man 
that is pilin’ up dollar on dollar — more’n he can pos- 
sibly spend in a lifetime, — and is cuttin’ down the poor 
boy that cleans out his barnyard, an’ fodders his stock, 
— does all the dirty jobs that he don’t want ter do 
himself, — to the very last penny, jest because the poor 
feller must work f’r what he can get, or starve, aint 
doin’ his dooty as an American citizen, as a man, nor 
as a Christian.” 

He spoke earnestly, and with a simple directness 
that did honor to his rugged manliness, and however 
his listener might disapprove of his sentiments, she 
well knew that in his own life he lived up to them most 
faithfully, and that it was a saying in the neighborhood 
that Nat Graves’ hired men were paid better, fed 
better, and did better work than those of any other 
farmer within the town limits. If a wild, wayward 
boy, who chanced to be one of the town’s charges, 


prue’s new bonnet. 


51 


could be tamed by no one else, he was sure to be 
stranded at last upon the Graves place, and once there, 
no farther complaint was ever heard, either of the 
master’s tyranny and injustice, or the boy’s laziness 
and trickery. That simple rule to which the man had 
squared his life seemed to work wonders on all who 
came beneath its influence. 

Dorindy knew all this, and yet — 

“ He that provideth not for his own household is worse 
than an infidel.” 

She repeated the words very softly, and in her 
meekest of prayer-meeting tones, but Nat had heard 
that much abused quotation too often to be unpre- 
pared for it. 

‘ ‘ I take it that that don’ t mean that we shall pro- 
vide f ’r our own at somebody else’s expense, whether 
we’re the one that hires, or the one that’s hired. The 
fact is, as the Constitootion has it, every man has equal 
rights, and if I underpay my workman f’r doin’ a fair 
job, jest because he needs the work, and can’t live 
without it, I’m stealin' from him, — his time, and 
strength, and skill, all of which are his by right. 
Then, on ’tother hand, if he shirks his work, — only 
workin’ when my eye is on him, — and breaks my tools, 
and wastes my substance, he’s stealin’ my money, by 
not givin’ me the fair equivalent agreed upon between 
us.” 

“You’re puttin’ the question ruther strong, seems 
ter me,” was the modest rejoinder. “But I s’ pose, 
bein’ a man, you understand sech things better’ n we 
weaker vessels do. 


52 


QUEENSHITHE. 


They were sitting alone together in Mrs. Jeff’s neat 
sitting-room, for it had chanced (?) when meeting was 
over, that Nat had found himself walking side by side 
with the widow out of the school-house, and up the 
road that led to their respective homes, — an arrange- 
ment that had become quite frequent of late, although 
without the least design on the part of the unsuspect- 
ing swain. 

But to-night, for the first time, he had begun to feel 
an uneasy consciousness that this constant dancing 
attendance upon Jefferson Hackett’s widow, for the 
sake of a sum, insignificant in itself, and of importance 
only as a matter of principle, was really placing him 
in an embarrassing position, from which it would be 
wise to withdraw as soon as possible, especially as 
there was an undertone of tenderness in the widow’s 
low spoken words that made the honest fellow feel that 
he was perhaps arousing sentiments in that bereaved 
female’s breast that it would be impossible for him to 
reciprocate, and dishonorable to encourage. 

Rising from his seat, with the usual country form- 
ula, that ’twas “about time he was travelin’ to’ards 
home,” he was surprised to feel the widow’s hand 
pressing hard upon his coat sleeve, while in a shrill 
whisper she bade him be silent, pointing meanwhile to 
th<? door leading into an adjoining bedroom, occupied 
by the bed-ridden old mother and Peg, — the child 
having to serve as night-nurse to the often wakeful, 
and always irritable old dame. 

Slowly the door turned, as they looked, creaking 


prue’s new bonnet. 


53 


upon its hinges, and into the dimly lighted room crept 
a shrinking, faintly outlined form, that might have 
been a shadow but for the faint rustle of its scant night 
garments, and the soft patter of bare feet upon the 
floor, as, taking no heed whatever of the silent watchers, 
she passed aimlessly from one object to another, now 
making gestures as if dusting the various articles of 
furniture, then carefully re-arranging a rug here and 
there, upon the neatly painted pine floor. 

Although her eyes were wide open, there was no 
light of consciousness in them, and Nat, who had 
never happened to witness the phenomenon of sleep 
walking before, felt a cold shiver run down his back, 
while his sturdy knees shook beneath him at sight of 
this, to him, strange mystery of an unsleeping soul 
directing the movements of a body whose natural 
senses were locked in the most profound slumber. 

But Mrs. Jeff was evidently too well used to the 
sight, to share in his awe or wonder, in fact, she was 
secretly delighted to be able to get up a little im- 
promptu show for the benefit ot her visitor. 

“ Keep still, so’s not to wake ’er! ” she whispered 
warningly. “And if she aint too sound asleep. I’ll 
show you what I can make her do in this state. She 
minds enough sight better when she’s asleep than when 
she’s awake,” she added, in an incautiously spiteful 
undertone. 

And taking a half-finished stocking from her work- 
basket, she put it into the child’s hands, with the low, 
but firmly spoken command: 


54 


QUEENSHITHE. 


“Knit” 

For a moment it seemed as if the work was about 
to drop from the listless, uncertain hands, and some- 
thing of bewilderment and perplexity appeared in the 
movements of her head, as if the sleep dulled senses 
were feebly striving to comprehend the idea that had 
been thus suddenly thrust upon them, but at a more 
emphatic and stern — 

“Knit! Knit!” the limp fingers grasped more 
firmly the familiar needles, and began knitting, with a 
slow, deliberate motion, never halting or varying, just 
as a delicately complicated machine would work, under 
the requisite conditions. 

“ Je whittiker! ” ejaculated the astonished specta- 
tor, beneath his breath, — “if that don’t beat all cre- 
ation! But see here. Mis’ Hackett, do you s’pose you 
could make her do anything that she wa’ant used to, 
— didn’t know by heart, as you might say ? ” 

The widow thought for a moment, and then a 
strange look, half doubtful, half triumphant, passed 
across her face, and a cunning smile curled her thin 
lips, as she hastily took from a closet a bundle of pre- 
pared oaten straws, and shaking them out upon the 
table, gently forced the sleeping child into a chair 
beside it, 

“And now,” she said, putting her face down until 
her cheek almost touched the girls own, ‘ ‘ braid the 
braid that you learned to do from Roxy Rae. ’ ’ 

A shiver passed over the child’s ‘senseless form, and 
she wavered to and fro for a moment, as if about to 


prue’s new bonnet. 


55 


fall from her chair, but the inexorable command being 
repeated, she took the straws in her fingers, and began 
the task, with a look of such utter wretchedness upon 
her white face that Nat Graves’ tender heart was 
touched, and he ventured the whispered remonstance: 

‘ ‘ She seems dretful loth to do that work, somehow, 
— seems ter me I wouldn’t insist upon it, ’f I was 
you.” 

But by this time, the widow had evidently come to 
forget the presence of a third person entirely, as, 
bending over the table, she watched with gleaming, 
hungry eyes, every motion of the unconscious fingers, 
her cheeks white with excitement, and her lips trem- 
ulous, while muttering from time to time: 

“ That’s it! I see now, — that’s the very trick that I 
couldn’ t get the hang of ’ ’ 

It was an uncanny sight, — the dimly lighted room, 
murky with grim shadows, that lurked in every cor- 
ner, and stretched, grotesque unrealities, across the 
the unpapered wall, like attendant demons at some 
unholy incantation, while not a sound broke the un- 
natural stillness save the labored breathing of the som- 
nambulest, the low rustle of the straws, and the 
smothered ejaculations of the eager-eyed woman, 
watching with fierce intentness the placing of every 
strand, that went to the make-up of poor Roxy’s cher- 
ished invention. 

Nat Graves was by no means a superstitious or even 
an imaginative man, but the hour, the scene, and 
above all, the strange power exercised by that stern 


56 


QUEENSHITHE. 


willed woman over the helpless sleeper, thrilled him 
with a vague horror, and oblivious for the moment of 
everything but a desire to escape from the, to him, 
revolting sight, he hurried out of the house, without 
even a word of leavetaking or excuse. 

“I honestly b’lieve the widder Jeff’s a witch, or 
somethin’ worse! ” he muttered to himself, as he took 
the short cut across the fields on his way home. 

‘ ‘ There was murder in her eyes when she stood 
over that poor little creature, and if she’d woke up at 
the wrong time, the Lord only knows what would a’ 
happened to ’er. It’s a turrible thing f’r one person 
to have sech a power over another, and, — well, all is, 
that extra dollar an’ a half may go ter grass, f’r all a’ 
me. I aint a’ goin’ ter trust my head in the lion’s 
mouth again, f’r that much.” 

And he kept his word. 


CHAPTER IV. 


“ET TU BRUTE.” 

S OMEWHAT to the girls’ surprise, cousin Dorindy 
had not deigned to show her face in the Rae 
household for several weeks, and stranger still, her 
little handmaiden, since her short sojourn there, had 
never once crossed their threshold. To be sure, Se- 
well, with a boy’s love of the mysterious, declared 
that he had seen her more than once, in the dusk of 
evening, hanging about the tree-bordered lane, hiding 
in the shadows when he came near, and never reply- 
ing to any salutation or call from him, but to this 
Roxy gave little thought. The child loved the silence 
and solitude of Nature, and whenever she could es- 
cape from the eye of her harsh taskmistress, nothing 
delighted her more than a solitary stroll under the 
friendly shadows, on one of these calm, sweet May 
evenings, one of her favorite haunts being this same 
lane, where the wild cherry blooms loaded the air with 
their cloying sweetness, and the meadow beyond was 
all alight with the tiny tapers of myriads of flitting fire- 
flies, that made the dusk luminous with their elfish 
sparks. 

Still, in spite of her reasonings, Roxy could not get 
the thought out of her head that something might be 


58 


QUEENSHITHE. 


amiss with the child. Perhaps Dorindy, who was one 
of the most jealous souls that ever breathed, might 
have taken offence at some careless word dropped by 
them, and innocently repeated by Peg after her return 
home. 

“I know how Dorindy’ 11 pick anything out of any- 
body, at the point of a pin, and now she’s a little 
touchy, I expect, on account of my not failin’ in with 
her plans about the straw work. I guess Pll run over 
there this evenin’ , and so show my good will, for after 
all, she’s our own kin, and I wouldn’t have any hard 
feelin’s between us for the world.” 

And acting upon her own kindly suggestion, — when 
the work of the day was laid aside, the hearth clean 
swept, and the embers in the fireplace carefully covered 
with ashes, to be ready for the morning’s re-kindling, 
— Roxy replaced her homespun apron with one of 
delicately sprigged muslin, and tying over her dark 
locks a coarse straw bonnet of her own braiding, 
she started out to make her purposed call. 

The sun had already gone down behind the western 
hills, and the evening shadows were deepening in 
every clump of alders and cluster of wild cherry trees 
by the scarce cleared roadside, while the whippoor- 
will’s mournful call sounded now and then from the 
near thickets, and the soft, warm air was heavy with 
the perfume of myrads of night-blooming flowers 
that, pale, listfess, and scentless beneath the bold glare 
ol day, now lifted their delicate chalices honey-full to 
the brim, to tempt the night moths, one of which. 


prue’s new bonnet. 


59 


fluttering aimlessly in the perfumed dusk, brushed the 
girl’s cheek with his outspread wings, then suddenly 
dropping upon the upturned disc of some beckoning 
wayside flower, spread wide his plumy sails as if 
mutely challenging human skill to match his marvel- 
lous grace and beauty. 

Roxy Rae’s life had had little of poetry or outside 
beauty in it, for, from, her childhood it had been one 
stern, steady, unremitting* struggle for the common 
comforts of life for herself and those dear to her, but 
there was in her inmost nature a chord that never 
failed to vibrate to the touch of whatever was fair and 
sweet about her, although she never dreamed of put- 
ting into words the emotions that thrilled her. 

And now, she could not but pause a moment, with 
her feet deep in soft, warm grasses and starry eyed 
‘ ‘ innocents, ’ ’ to breathe in deep draughts of the pure, 
sweet scented air, and listen with ear alert, to the low 
note of the wayside cricket, keeping time with his 
tiny cymbals to the music of Nature’s great orchestra. 

“ How this rests a body! ” she said to herself, with 
a half guilty feeling as, in the near distance, she caught 
a glimpse of the light in her cousin’s window, and re- 
membered how that coldly practical dame would scorn 
the idea of anything restful or beautiful in a twilight 
walk along a common country road. 

As she drew near the house she heard through the 
open window the widow’s sharp tones, raised to ac- 
commodate the ear of her deaf old mother: 

‘ ‘ I tell you there aint no law that can touch me if I 


6o 


QUEENSHITHE. 


do. I made ’er a fair offer, and she jest laughed in 
my face; and now I’ve got the upper hand, with no 
thanks to her, I shall do the best I can f’r myself. 
Every tub’s got ter stand on its own bottom, and there 
aint no sense nor reason in her thinkin’ she’s goin’ to 
get all the profit there is to be made out o’ that braid 
o’ hers. I’ll — ” She lifted her eyes, and stopped 
short in her sentence as if suddenly struck dumb, for 
there in the doorway, with the lamplight shining full 
upon her astonished and sternly reproachful face, was 
Roxy Rae herself. 

For a full minute neither spoke, and then Mrs. Jeff 
broke the silence with an embarrassed laugh : 

“Why, Roxy, is that you? Walk right in and 
help yourself to a cheer. Here grandmaam,” ad- 
dressing a dried up atomy, propped up by pillows in 
her bed in a far corner of the room, “here’s Elbert 
Rae’s Roxy come to see you. Don’t ye want ter 
shake hans with ’ er ? ” 

Roxy approached the bed, and the old woman put 
out a skinny, tremulous hand, with the uncertain 
motion that characterizes the blind. 

“He! he! he!” she gurgled, in a weak, quavering 
undertone. “ Who’d a’ thought it, — jest as we was 
speakin’ — ” 

Her daughter hastily interposed: 

‘ ‘ What a stranger you be, ’ ’ and she drew forward 
with a great show of hospitality, the big, red cushioned 
rocking-chair, and motioned her visitor to be seated. 

‘ ‘ Do set down, and make yerself comfortable. I was 


PRUE S NEW BONNET. 


6i 


sayin’, only to-day, that I guessed yon’d got above 
noticin’ poor relations, now you’regettin’ rich so fast.” 

“Yes, yes, — rich^ — that’s the word!” put in the 
old blind woman, mouthing the word between her 
toothless gums, like a dog gnawing a particularly fine 
bone. “ Money’s the thing, — get money, and you’ll 
be rich, — yes, rich." 

Roxy turned away with a feeling of intense disgust 
struggling with the pity that was always awakened by 
the sight of this old creature, in whom every passion 
but that of averice had long since burned itself out, 
leaving only the repulsive, scarce conscious clay, to 
show that life and being were not yet extinct. Then 
with a decided motion of her hand she put aside the 
proffered seat. 

“No,” she said steadily, although her cheeks 
burned, and her heart throbbed with a feeling strangely 
compounded of indignation and sorrow. ‘ ‘ No, I 
won’t set down in your house. Cousin Dorindy, till I 
know whether there’s to be peace between us or not. 
What did you mean by the talk I heard you makin’ 
just as I came up to the door ? ” 

The widow turned red and white by turns, while 
her eyes, refusing to meet the straightforward look of 
her visitor, were fixed intently upon the knitting that 
she held in her hand. 

“What talk?” she stammered at length. “I 
don’t know what you’re drivin’ at. I’m sure. I was 
only tellin’ Grandmaam about — my tryin’ to get Sally 
Watson’s receipt f’r colorin’ red with that new kind 
o’ bark.” 


62 


QUEENSHITHE. 


That the woman was telling a deliberate falsehood 
would have been patent to a much less keen observer 
than her young kinswoman, and the girl could no 
longer control her natural indignation. 

‘ ‘ I know who and what you was talkin’ about, 
she said sternly. “You think you’ve picked out the 
secret of my new braid, and now you’re plannin’ to 
take the business out of my hands, and crowd me out 
of it, — deny it if you can! ’’ 

“I don’t want to deny it,’’ and Mrs. Jeff drew 
herself up defiantly, while a smile of gratified malice 
replaced the sullen frown with which she had at first 
listened to the girl’s accusation. To do her justice, 
she was no coward, and now literally girding herself, 
with hands on hips, for the inevitable conflict, she 
continued: ‘ ‘ I made you a fair offer in the beginnin’ , 
as you know, so now you’ve only yerself to thank if 
I do take up the business, and run it on my own hook. 
I’ve been thinkin’ f’r some time of enlargin’ my 
millinary business, and now while this braid’s the 
fashion, I calculate ’ twill be a good time to start. ’ F 
you’ll look there on the secertary at the foot o’ Grand- 
maam’s bed, you’ll see my new sign that I’m goin’ 
ter hang out to-morrow mornin’. Seth Wyman 
painted it, and / call it a pretty neat thing. ’ ’ 

The cool insolence of her tone was more exasper- 
ating than the most violent abuse could have been, 
and the hot Rae blood rose to fever heat in Roxy’s 
veins, and tingled sharply in her very finger tips. 
But with a strong effort, she suppressed the angry 


prue’s new bonnet. 


63 


retort that rose to her lips, and following the direction 
of her rival’s outstretched finger, looked silently at 
the before unnoticed ‘ ‘ sign, ’ ’ as Dorindy had proudly 
designated it. 

The secretary was in the darkest corner of the 
room, and the light from the one oil lamp was dim and 
uncertain, yet in spite of the obscurity, those staring 
black letters upon a white ground, stood out as dis- 
tinctly before the girl’s vision, as if each were, indi- 
vidually, animated by the same evil light that burned 
in the eyes of the taunting woman beside her. 


MRS. DORINDA HACKETT. 

BONNETS AND HATS MADE AND TRIMMED HERE. 
NEW MARTHA JEFFERSON STRAWS 
(at the lowest possible rates.) 


All unconsciously Roxy read the words aloud, 
pausing over the concluding ones, with a queer, chok- 
ing sensation in her throat : 

“ New Martha Jefferson Straws 
(at the lowest possible rates.) ” 

It couldyit be! — she must be dreaming. Why, that 
invention was her own, belonged to her just as much 
as her hair and eyes, her feet and her hands. It was 
the child of her brain, and doubly, trebly dear for the 
many hours of mental effort that it had cost her. 
She would as soon have thought of Dorindy’ s stealing 
Sewell or Prue before her very face, as of her ventur- 
ing in the broad light of day, before the eyes of the 


64 


QUEENSHITHE. 


whole world, to appropriate to her own use this 
precious possession of another’s. 

She shut her eyes, clinging dizzily to the back of a 
chair for support, and hearing indistinctly as from some 
dim, muffled distance, the voice of the widow: 

“You see there aint no law to hender my usin’ the 
braid, if you did invent it. ’ ’ And the harsh, strained 
cackle of the old woman, like some wierd, uncanny 
echo: 

“He! he! he! D’rindy’ll keep clear o’ the law', — 
she’s cute, she is. He! he!’’ 

Slowly, painfully, the whole significance of her 
censin’^ project and the terrible blow that it must, if 
carried out, prove to her own modest industry, dawned 
upon poor Roxy’s bewildered brain, and in a voice 
that was pitifully like the cry of some hurt animal, 
she exclaimed: 

“ Why Dorindy! if you do this you’ll just ruin my 
business, — didn’t you think of that? ’’ 

Dorindy paused long enough to turn a seam in her 
knitting, before replying in her usual placid monotone: 

“ ’Taint my business to look out f ’r other folks, — 
everybody f’r himself in this world, and Old Harry 
take care o’ the hindmost. And supposin’ it should 
cut into your trade in the Marthy Jefferson braids, 
you won’t be no worse off than you was before you 
thought of it. Besides, ’ ’ with a sneer that the girl felt 
like a blow upon her hot cheek, “ there’s Prue gettin’ 
to be sech a great girl, she might go out spinnin’ or 
doin’ housework, same’s the Patridge girls do, f’r 


prue’s new bonnet. 65 

instance, — there’s plenty o’ work in the world f’r 
them that aint too good to do it. ’ ’ 

From that day thenceforward, Roxana Rae never 
felt the old bewilderment and surprise at the story of 
any murder committed in the heat of anger. However 
she might and did condemn the deed, she could under- 
stand in a measure the terrible possibilities of even one 
moment of unrestrained passion, when the evil that 
may hide unsuspected in the gentlest nature, leaps 
forth in some unguarded instant, fierce tongued, to 
destroy that which the repentance of a lifetime can 
never restore. 

But the gentler strain inherited from her quaker- 
born mother, added to years of practice in the nobler 
virtues of self control and patient self abnegation, 
were not without their restraining power in this hour 
of dire temptation, and scarcely conscious in her keen 
distress, she cried reproachfully: 

‘ ‘ How can thee be so cruel, Dorindy ? Thee knows 
how tender I have been of the child, sparing her all 
of the roughest and hardest, and how I had planned 
that this invention of mine would have helped me to 
make a scholar of her. And now , — my pretty little 
Prue to be a drudge in some richer neighbor' s kitchen! 
I’d work my fingers to the very bone before I’d 
allow it.” 

‘ ‘ Highty — tighty ! ’ ’ hooted the old dame. ‘ ‘ Seems 
ter me, f’r beggars, we’re gettin’ pretty high in the 
instep. What’d — ” 

Her daughter with an impatient movement, threw a 


66 


QUEENSHITHE. 


corner of the coverlid over her face, checking the 
connected speech, but not silencing the wicked old 
tongue, that kept up a spiteful muttering beneath the 
bedclothes. 

To tell the truth, Mrs. Jeff was really a good deal 
taken aback at this unlooked for outburst of sisterly 
pride and ambition. To her, Prue was a strong, well 
grown girl, quite able to earn her own living by the 
work of her hands, and she had not the smallest con- 
ception of the elder sister’s prideful tenderness for 
this, the one bright blossom upon the bare waste of 
her commonplace life. She ran her knitting-needle 
through her hair with a puzzled frown, while her eyes 
watched curiously the tear-stained face, that was now 
slowly resuming its usual expression of patient de- 
termination, and her voice was a trifle less hard as she 
muttered: 

“You needn’t flare up like that, — I dunno’s Prue’s 
any better’ n the rest of us.” 

“We won’t make any more talk about it,” inter- 
rupted her visitor, drawing her cape a litde closer 
about her shoulders, and shivering, as if the air of the 
room had all at once taken on an unnatural chill. 

“You are doing us a great and cruel wrong in this 
matter, and you know it. But I believe that some- 
how and in some way, God will help us, for He says 
He’s the ‘ father o’ the fatherless, and of him that has 
no helper; ’ anyhow, Pd rather be in my place than 
yours.^^ 

She was out of the door, and half way to the gate, 


prue’s new bonnet. 


67 


before the widow could rally her bewildered senses to 
frame a reply to this unexpected assault from her gen- 
tle natured kinswoman, while to her old mother’s 
disjointed mutterings she vouchsafed only the curtest 
and sharpest of replies: 

course I hadn’t nothin’ to say. When Roxy 
begins quotin’ Scripture as an argument in business 
affairs, I know enough ter keep my mouth shet, f’r 
I’ve noticed that it’s the side that’s gettin’ the worst 
of it that always does that. But there’s this much 
about it,” with a triumphant chuckle, “she’ll find 
that I aint the woman to be scared, nor driv, nor 
coaxed out of anything that I’ve once set my mind 
on, so there! ” 

Meanwhile, the girl herself, standing for a moment 
at the little whitewashed gate that separated the 
widow’s front yard from the public highway, with her 
bonnet pushed back to let the soft evening air cool 
her hot forehead, struggled hard within herself to gain 
courage to face without flinching this new and un- 
looked for calamity that had befallen her. 

But for some reason she found it impossible to con- 
centrate her thoughts upon Dorindy’s scheme, and 
the almost certain financial ruin that this portended to 
herself. 

She looked across to the adjoining farmhouse, and 
noted with a dull curiosity the unusual bustle going on 
in and about the building, the lights carried hurriedly 
from room to room, the sound of hammering, and 
between whiles, the hearty tone of Captain Barden, 
mingling with those of his ever cheery helpmate. 


68 


QUEENSHITHE. 


“The wind’s cornin’ round,” and Roxy held up a 
wet finger to make sure of the direction of the fresh- 
ening breeze, “ so I guess the Sally Barden’s goin’ 
to sail with the morning tide. I’ve a good mind — ” 

And she actually took a few steps in the direction 
of the lighted farmhouse, then suddenly checking her- 
self, with a recollection of the utter uselessness of an 
appeal to these good friends, in her present strait, she 
retraced her steps, dragging herself wearily over the 
very road that, only an hour before, her feet had 
trodden so lightly, and without the least premonition 
of the trouble that was to befall her. 

But how did Dorindy find out the secret of the 
braid ? 

Strangely enough, in her excitement, that question 
had not before occurred to her, and now, it was as if 
some one had struck her a sudden blow. She stopped 
short in her weary walk, her heart beating wildly, and 
every nerve in her body quivering with indignant 
astonishment. 

It could not be that Peg, the child whom she had 
befriended by every means in her power, and who had 
professed to love her so dearly, it could not be that she 
had played the traitor, and that knowing the secret, 
she had imparted it to the woman who, of all the 
world, had it in her power to injure, perhaps ruin the 
inventor of it. 

It was improbable, and yet, certain things, unnoticed 
at the time or counted of little consequence, recurred 
to her mind, and helped to confirm the monstrous 
suspicion. 


prue’s new bonnet. 


69 


Peg’s strange avoidance of them all for the last few 
weeks, and her persistant refusal to answer Sewell’s 
challenge, even while hovering about the cottage, as 
if longing, yet fearing to look upon the friendly face 
within, that had never worn a frown for her, all went 
to prove that the wily widow had succeeded, by fair 
means or foul, in wringing from the child the secret 
that she had sworn so solemnly to keep to the death. 

There are few things so hard to bear as the defec- 
tion of one whom we have loved and trusted, frankly 
and unreservedly, and our poor Roxy now broke 
down completely, and dropping upon a log by the 
wayside, she wept bitterly, such tears as neither sor- 
row, pain, nor disappointment had ever before had 
power to wring from her brave, patient heart. 

The silence and loneliness around her accorded well 
with her mood, and she found herself thinking with a 
kind of sad satisfaction, that no human eye or ear 
was present to disturb with undesired sympathy this 
hour of her bitterest disappointment and regret, for even 
now, her strong sense of justice would not allow her 
to blame unreservedly the guilty child who, she well 
knew, was but the tool of her unscrupulous mistress. 
“ I ought to have known better myself,” she repeated 
again and again, in an unselfish effort to make poor, 
erring Peg’s fault seem lighter in her own eyes. 

‘ ‘ She wouldn’ t dare, for her life, to go contrary to 
Dorindy, and I’d no business to give her the chance 
to steal my invention.” 

As she walked wearily up the lane that led to her 


70 


QUEENSHITHE. 


own home, she experienced a feeling of relief at sight 
of the darkened windows. The children, tired with 
their day’s work, were in bed, and she would not 
have to share her sad news with them until, by a 
night’s rest she should have gained the needed com- 
posure to make as light as possible of this new trouble 
that threatened them. 

No one stirred as she noiselessly lifted the latch, 
and with stealthy steps sought her own little chamber 
where, creeping into bed beside her sleeping sister, 
she lay awake for hours, turning over and over in her 
mind the puzzling question of how, in the face of this 
unlooked for drawback, she could carry out her plans 
in behalf of those dear ones, who naturally looked to 
her for support and care. 

“ God helps those who help themselves,” repeated 
again and again, brought a gleam of hope to her dis- 
turbed soul, and she slept at last, the sound, dreamless 
sleep of youth and health. 

It was almost morning, for a faint, gray light made 
objects in the room indistinctly visible, when Roxy 
started up, wide awake, with a sudden consciousness 
of another presence in the room beside herself and 
Prue, of a kiss pressed softly upon her forehead, and 
tears, not her own, warm upon her cheek. 

She started up in bed, trembling all over with vague 
alarm, but at that moment, a whisper, so soft and low 
that only herself could by any chance catch its gentle 
murmur, sounded from the half open door; 

‘ ‘ Good-bye, dear Roxy, good-bye. ’ ’ 


prue’s new bonnet. 


71 


She knew the voice, choked though it was by 
tears, and starting from her bed she crept noiselessly 
to the window and peered eagerly out into the dim 
gloaming. Not a soul was in sight, and she rubbed 
her eyes doubtfully, not at all certain if she had been 
awake or dreaming, yet with a sudden softening of her 
heart toward the no doubt sorely tempted author of 
all her trouble. 

“ Poor little Peg! ” she sobbed pityingly, as she re- 
turned to her bed, shivering from the chill that always 
precedes the dawn in our northern clime, “ I couldrUt 
blame her if I wouldy 

And putting her arms tenderly about her own sleep- 
ing darling, she prayed the God of the orphan to 
protect the poor little waif, whose secret remorse and 
suffering she could easily understand and pity. 


CHAPTER V. 


“I SMELL A RAT !” 

D uring the first few weeks following Roxy’s in- 
terview with the widow several events transpired 
to render the latter’s scheme less harmful to the interests 
of the Rae’s than they had at first apprehended. 

To begin with, the whole neighborhood was stirred 
as one man, when, upon the very day in which the 
new millinary sign was displayed for the first time, the 
news spread that Peg, the bound girl was missing, and 
could not be found although everybody turned out 
and made a careful search for her in every locality 
where a body, dead or alive, could by any possibility 
be concealed. 

Questioned by the authorities, Mrs. Jeff reluctantly 
admitted that the girl had, more than once declared 
her intention of “making way with herself,’’ — thus 
practically acknowledging the hardness of her rule 
over the unfortunate child, — while with equal reluct- 
ance she owned that, for some unexplained reason, the 
threat had been repeated that very night, although, 
as she earnestly declared, she had not at the time, had 
the smallest suspicion that it would be carried out. 

To do the widow justice, she was dreadfully distressed 
over the unaccountable disappearance of her childish 


prue’s new bonnet. 


73 


bond slave, bwt nobody believed in the sincerity of her 
expressed anxiety, and as the search proved unavail- 
ing^, people generally, with that natural love for the 
mysterious and horrible common to the unlearned 
masses of the remote country districts of the day, be- 
gan to surmise fearful things regarding the possible 
fate of the missing child, with often exaggerated stories 
of her harsh taskmistress’ cruelties, until, before long 
the very atmosphere of the small hamlet was all aquiver 
with frightful stories, — some even going so far as to 
hint that the widow, with her own pitiless hands, had 
made way with the child that she might keep the 
secret of the new braid in her own possession, (the 
fact having somehow leaked out that it was through 
her unwilling aid that Roxy Rae’s invention had been 
stolen). 

A lad who often had occasion to pass the widow’s 
house after nightfall in search of a strayed cow, de- 
clared that he had on numberless occasions, heard the 
mistress’ voice raised in fierce anger, followed by cruel 
blows, and the cries and entreaties of the hapless 
victim. 

“It seemed,” he explained, “as if Mis Jeff was 
bound ter make Peg let on ’bout suthen or other, that 
the gal wouldn’t tell on, and she had ’er out in the 
shed, whalin’ ’er ter make ’er give in.” 

How much of this was fact, and how much pure 
invention few of the excited townsfolk stopped to find 
out, and the ball rolled on, gathering size and strength 
with each revolution, until the suspected woman was 


74 


QUEENSHITHE. 


completely ostracised by most if not all of her old neigh- 
bors, while more than once, as if to voice the public 
sentiment, the mischievous urchins of the village had, 
under cover of the darkness, tried their best to deface 
the new sign by using it as a target for rotten eggs, mud, 
and any other unsavory missiles that came to hand. 

All this was hard to bear, but Mrs. Jeff was no fool, 
but a shrewd, worldly wise woman in her way, and she 
well knew that the very violence of the storm would 
in time, turn the tide of popular feeling in her favor, 
by exciting the sympathy of the better part of the 
community in her behalf. 

Unreasoning and lawless violence naturally arouses 
our indignation in behalf of the sufferer, and almost 
before we realize it, we begin to find excuses for his 
sin in sympathy for his sufferings, more especially 
when as in this case the sin was really hypothetical, 
without a fragment of proof to uphold it. 

So the widow meekly scrubbed the filth from her 
defaced sign, set a pitcher of pink cheeked wild roses 
in her front window, and sat herself down in full sight 
of the highway, patiently and uncomplainingly, with 
her straw work in hand, while the passer-by at almost 
any hour of the day might hear her singing a fragment 
from a well-known hymn which, on account perhaps 
of a certain devout suggestiveness, was naturally a 
favorite with her: 

“Ye creeping ants and worms. 

His various wisdom show. 

And flies in all your shining swarms, 

Praise him who drest you so.” 


PRUE S NEW BONNET. 


75 


There was no effort at retaliation or complaint, and 
little by little, the good wives of the village, their first 
indignation over poor Peg’s hard fate having had time 
to cool, and their curiosity getting the upper hand in 
a longing to inspect the new head gear, of which they 
could only get tantalizing glimpses from the outside, 
fell back into the old friendly, neighborly ways, drop- 
ping in casually to take a look at the tempting display 
of ribbons and “artificials” that Mrs. Jeff, with the 
instinct of a born saleswoman, had arranged with a 
good deal of taste upon a long table in her pleasant 
sitting-room, and really, almost before they were them- 
selves conscious of their own inconsistency, the major 
part of “Those who came to look, remained to — 
until the new straws that, in her enforced solitude, the 
thrifty dame had contrived to lay in a fair stock of, 
were quickly disposed of, and in many cases to the 
very ones who had been loudest in their denunciation 
of her underhand dealings. 

It may be a lamentable fact, but it is none the less 
true that, one and all, our mental and moral decisions 
are largely swayed by pocket influence. Easy taxes 
have kept many a nation in contented servitude to a 
tyrant, while an added penny of tribute has caused the 
overthrow of some of the strongest governments of 
the earth, and the death of uncounted millions of 
human beings. 

Thus Mrs. Jeff, by putting down the price of the 
Martha Jefferson straws a few cents lower than her 
rival could afford, secured to herself a goodly share of 


76 


QUEENSHITHE. 


the village custom, heedless of the fact that, in so small 
a community, a business that would have sufficed to 
yield a fair profit to one, divided between the two, 
must necessarily prove unsatisfactory and scantily 
profitable to both. 

The summer with its fierce heats and days of hurry 
and bustle wore away, bringing plenty of work but 
little ready money to add to Roxy’s slender hoard, 
although all three toiled early and late, to lay up some- 
thing for the long, dreary winter that would shortly be 
upon them. 

Sewell found almost constant employment with the 
neighboring farmers, who in most instances found it 
more convenient to pay him in farm produce, declaring 
unanimously that it was a bad year for them, with the 
weevil in the wheat, and potatoes struck with rust, so 
that for their own ready money they would have to 
depend entirely upon the hay crop, to carry them 
through the winter. A state of things that could not 
be gainsaid, so that the young cottagers were fain to 
content themselves with a stock of those necessaries 
that would preserve life — for people won’t starve on 
potatoes and salt, while a hot Indian bannock is satis- 
fying to a healthy appetite, even if one is obliged to 
eat it without butter. A neighbor who was clearing a 
portion of his forest land by burning it over, was glad 
to have Sewell carry off all that he would of the charred 
refuse which, in spite of its unpromising appearance, 
was a good heat producer, and would keep the bigf 
fireplace ablaze all through the winter months, if care- 
fully husbanded. 


PRUE S NEW BONNET. 


77 


Prue sold berries and herbs to the housewives of the 
village, and when these failed, she patiently sought 
among the briars and brambles of the sheep pastures 
for every stray lock of wool, all of which Roxy deftly 
carded and spun into the stout footwear that the com- 
ing snow-drifts would make a necessity. 

Every device that the elder sister’s active brain could 
contrive, to keep the wolf from their door when the 
dreaded snows should lie deep upon its threshold, was 
adopted, while every spare penny was carefully 
hoarded, and yet, Roxy’s brave heart sank within her 
at thought of the unequal struggle with cold and hun- 
ger that her own slender hands would be forced to 
wage. 

With all her ingenuity and skill, she could not with- 
out material contrive the clothing absolutely necessary 
in a climate where the thermometer often stands at 
twenty below zero even at noonday. Shoes were, for 
one thing, a necessity, and although Sewell went bare- 
footed long after the early frosts nipped his feet cruelly, 
his one pair of Sunday shoes were giving out all over, 
and could not be counted upon as the least protection 
when the snow should cover the ground. Prue’s cloak 
was so outgrown that she could not by any possibility 
wear it another winter, and — (of herself she seldom 
thought, unless warned by unmistakable twinges of 
rheumatism, that her thin clothing was a poor defence 
even against the chill of a sharp day in the late autumn). 

That Dorindy would not rest until she had secured 
all the custom of the village, the girl well knew, but 


78 


QUEENSHITHE. 


how and in what way she would go to work to accom- 
plish that purpose still remained a secret, dark and 
threatening, that overhung poor Roxy’s waking hours 
like a cloud of impending calamity and dread. The 
farmer’s wives and daughters in the outlying districts 
still brought their scant custom to her, and a few of 
the village matrons, as if to make up for their defection 
in the way of straw work, employed her now and then 
upon a small job of netting or fine needlework, but 
beyond an occasional coarse straw hat for some school 
or farm boy, she could count upon little or nothing 
from the source nearest home. If to her native inge- 
nuity, good taste, and skill, she had added something 
of her cousin’s shrewdness and business capacity, she 
might even now have managed to reclaim a large part 
of the custom that had drifted away from her, but like 
most inventive natures she lacked the inborn cunning 
of a successful business woman, nor had she learned 
how to approach her fellow mortals on the blind side. 
She would have scorned to practice the small deceits, 
even if they had occurred to her, that came so natural 
to the widow Jeff, and went so far towards making her 
wares desirable in the eyes of her flattered customers, 
while at the same time, she could not quite conceal 
the bitterness engendered by the defection of her old 
friends, who were only too glad to excuse themselves 
by accusing her of wanting to dictate to them who 
they should buy their wares of. If Mrs. Jeff could 
afford the straws ten cents cheaper than her cousin, 
why shouldn’t they buy of her? Why, indeed! and 


PRUE S NEW BONNET. 


79 


poor Roxy’s sore heart got many a thoughtless thrust 
from those who should have known better than to add 
an iota to what she was already bearing. 

One chilly day in October, Sewell came home from 
a neighboring village where he had gone on an errand 
for a friendly farmer, and unmindful of his usual merry 
greeting to the small household, sat soberly down be- 
fore the kitchen fire, and with a furtive glance at his 
sisters, remarked, in a tone of suppressed excitement: 

“ I saw something in Parker’s store over to the 
Corners, that’d make your eyes stick out, I guess.” 

Prue dropped her sewing, and Roxy’s foot paused 
for an instant upon the treadle of her flax wheel as, 
with anxious faces, both asked in a breath: 

‘ ‘ What was it, Sewell ? Do tell. ’ ’ 

Poor souls, the last few months had had nothing 
but ill news for them, and the boy’s face and tone 
were ominous of some new trouble. No wonder that 
Roxy’s brave voice quavered a little as she put the 
question. 

Sewell rubbed his hands slowly together, but he did 
not remove his eyes from the smouldering fire over 
which he was bending. 

“Well, you see, while Parker was putting up the 
things, I took a look round at the notices stuck up in 
the store. There was two of vandoos, one at Ho- 
mans’ and the other a lot of stock that a man down to 
the Crick wanted to sell; and old Bandy the shoe- 
maker had posted his runaway ’prentice, while another 
man, (I forget his name,) wanted to sell a hive o* 


8o 


QUEENSHITHE. 


bees. I’d spelled ’em all out, and was jest startin’ 
for the door to see what was goin’ on outside, when 
all at once I saw, right on the inside o’ the door, in 
great big starin’ letters: 

ATTENTION! 

MARTHA JEFFERSON STRAWS. 

I jumped as if I’d been kicked in eend, and I tell 
you my heart come right up in my mouth, when I 
saw ’twas a notice o’ Dorindy’s, claimin’ that she was 
the only one that could braid these straws, and offerin’ 
to supply all kinds of straw work besides. Then at 
the end she offered to take ’prentices to learn the 
trade. ’ ’ 

Roxy turned very pale but she did not speak, while 
Prue was loud in her indignation: 

“The mean old thing! Just like her to steal all 
the trade from us, (for she knows that the Comer 
folks have always got Roxy to do their straw work.) 
Isn’t there any way,” and she turned appealingly to 
her sister, “ that you can put a stop to her using this 
invention of yours to ruin us ? ” 

Roxy sadly shook her head, and something like 
despair looked out of her tired eyes, as she said 
huskily: 

“ Nothing, child— nothing. I’ve been all over the 
ground again and again, and I don’t see a single thing 
that I can do.” 

Sewell interposed. 

“ Parker says you ought to get a patent on your 


prue’s new bonnet. 


8i 


braid, and then nobody could make or teach it with- 
out payin’ you for the privilege. He seemed to know 
all about it,” in reply to his sister’s look of surprise, 
and when he saw me readin’ the notice, he come along 
“and begun to ask me something about the way 
Dorindy got holt of it. But I guess,” the boy added 
as an afterthought, “that he must a’ been jokin’ 
about the patent, for he laughed when he said it.” 

“Yes, he meant it for a joke, most likely,” re- 
turned Roxy, with such a new, strange bitterness in 
her tones that the children stared at her in silent 
wonder. They could not know how cruelly the iron 
had entered into her soul, and how utterly hopeless 
the future looked, stretching out before her one un- 
ending waste of dreary poverty and toil. Neither did 
they know, (she had spared them that humiliation,) 
that, urged by her good friend, Mrs. Cap’n Sol, she 
had ventured to consult Squire Biddle upon the ques- 
tion of applying for a patent, and had come away 
from the interview completely disheartened and humili- 
ated by the unconcealed contempt with which that 
astute expounder of the law had regarded her timid 
appeal to the protection provided for her more favored 
brothers. 

“You must understand, my good girl, that the 
Patent Office is a great institution^ and it takes a sight 
o’ money to run it. Now if they should take up 
every little insignificant notion, like a braid o’ straw 
for instance, there wouldn’t be no whoa to the calls 
they’d have made on ’em. They’d be overrun with 


82 


QUEENSHITHE. 


folks claimin’ a patent on everything, from a new kind 
o’ tow-boat run by steam, to a talking rag baby^ 
Besides,” and he stroked complacently his thin crop 
of pepper-and-salt whiskers, the undeniable badge of 
sexual superiority, “it ain’t a woman’s place to put 
’erself forrud in such things. There aint never been 
no patent granted to a woman in this country yet, 
and it’s my opinion that ’twill be a long day before 
there is.” 

And as if this were not enough to deter the daring 
female who would lay her unhallowed hand upon the 
protective ark of the nation, he put the possibility of 
a patent still farther out of her reach by an array of 
figures in the shape of costs, that struck our inex- 
perienced little country maiden fairly dumb with con- 
sternation. 

Why, his own fee as agent in the case, would more 
than cover her small savings for an entire season, to 
say nothing of the sum that must be paid to the au- 
thorities at Washington. 

She might as well submit to be robbed by Mrs. J eff 
as to spend all her savings in a fruitless endeavor to 
protect her rights, and as she span diligently, her 
woman’s wits occupied themselves in a vain endeavor 
to solve the question as to what her individual rights, 
as a non-voting citizen of this great Republic really 
were. Could she be robbed with impunity of the 
thought born in her own brain, simply because that 
brain was not the brain of a man ? 

Sewell had by this time forgotten the depression of 


PRUE S NEW BONNET. 


83 


an hour before, and as he busied himself with popping 
corn in the ashes, chatted merrily with Prue, laughing 
now and then at some lively sally of that small damsel 
and apparently as free from care for the future as the 
gray kitten purring contentedly on the hearth at his 
feet. 

“If he ever invents anything,” she thought, with a 
strong sense of injustice hot at her heart, “there is a 
law in the land to protect him in his right to it, while 
I—” 

She resolutely put the thought aside, and as reso- 
lutely forced herself to join in the children’s idle gos- 
sip. It were better not to think at all, where thought 
brought only distraction and bitter unrest. Perhaps — 
thousands have thought so, both before and after her, 
and yet — thought went on and is advancing still. 

That the widow’s sagacity had not been at fault was 
soon proved. Her advertisement had caught the at- 
tention of the public, not only at the Corners but in 
all the outlying districts, in every one of which her 
notice had been shrewdly posted, and quite a commo- 
tion was raised among the unemployed widows and 
maids, especially in regard to the offer of receiving 
apprentices. 

Mrs. Jeff had plenty of applications, but in this, as 
in everything else, her natural shrewdness moved her 
to the selection of the Partridge twins, who, to con- 
siderable natural taste and ingenuity, added the de- 
sirable qualification of belonging to one of the most 
prosperous neighborhoods within the town’s limits. 


84 


QUEENSHITHE. 


More than this, Plumy was the acknowledged belle 
of the litde community where she lived, and naturally 
all the lesser lights sought to imitate her in dress, 
manners, etc., so that she would not only be a fine 
figurehead upon which to display her wares, and thus 
tempt a wavering customer, but would help to make 
Mrs. Jeffs establishment the fashionable center for all 
the femininity of Bestport. To be sure her twin sister 
Puff had neither beauty nor vivacity to recommend 
her, but she was a steady-going, quiet creature, and 
could be made useful in a variety of ways, for Mrs. 
Jeff had no idea of spending her precious time in 
teaching these girls a business, that in her heart, she 
had not the least intention of giving them the oppor- 
tunity to learn. 

Apprentices of that day were supposed to have their 
board and instruction for their services, and in return 
they were expected to make themselves useful in any 
way that suited the convenience of their master or mis- 
tress. This was a great modification of the old Eng- 
lish system, introduced by our fathers, who, in 
addition to the tyro’s services, usually received a fee, 
varying in size with the relative importance of the 
trade to be learned. Thus it never occurred to the 
Partridge girls to resent the task laid upon them by 
Mrs. Jeff, of sitting by turns in Granny’s room, and 
while busied with their straw work, keeping the old 
dame company, or attending to her small wants when 
requested to do so. 

For a long time, even the sharp-eyed Plumy failed 


prue’s new bonnet. 


35 


to notice that, just at the critical point in the new 
braiding pattern, Mrs. Jeff invariably “changed 
hands,” or rather, “girls,” insisting that Granny’s 
sentinel should be relieved by her sister at that precise 
moment, so that the real secret of the braid still re- 
mained a secret, even after long weeks of faithful 
apprenticeship on the part of the defrauded Partridges. 

Naturally Plumy was the first to discover and resent 
this breach of faith on the part of the widow, and 
poor Puff, who was of the easy-going sort, was cheated 
out of many an hour of coveted sleep by her sister’s 
indignant complaints. 

“Here we’ve brought ’er m slats custom,” growled 
the dissatisfied one, putting her lips close to the ear of 
the would-be sleeper, for fear of being overheard, 
“ and didn’t she agree to learn us how to do that new 
braid ? And here she’s kept us on them old, nasty, 
common straws, that we knew how to do long before 
we came under her roof. I say its a cheat all through, 
keepin’ us tendin’ out on that old skilaton in the bed- 
room. Oh, I say. Puff,” with a sudden change of 
mood, ‘ ‘ did you ever hear such an old cackler in all 
your life? ” 

Puff was wide awake now, for this was a topic that 
interested her far more than Mrs. Jeff’s shortcomings. 

‘ ‘ The rhymes that she strings off are enough to 
make a cat laugh,” she returned, with a sympathetic 
giggle. 

“You remember old grandma Stacy, when she’d 
lost ’er senses, she used ter say over verses from the 


86 


QUEENSHITHE. 


hymn-book by the yard, all night long sometimes, 
but this one’s verses are all the tail end of riddles and 
rhymes, as old as the hills. She’ll lay there, and 
mutter over and over, a dozen times a day: 

‘ The earth did quake, 

My heart did ache. 

To see what a hole the two-legged fox did make.’ ” 

Both girls laughed, but Plumy, who was fond of the 
mysterious, shuddered slightly. 

“You don’t s’ pose now, Puff, that she means any- 
thing by that, do you ? ’ ’ 

Puff drew a long breath. 

“ I dunno what she could mean. I’m sure, but I 
heard her call the widder a ‘ two-legged fox ’ one day, 
when she heard ’er tellin’ about an extra good trade 
she’d made.” 

The girls were silent for some seconds, and then 
Plumy put a trembling arm about her sister and 
whispered fearfully: 

“What do you s’ pose ever become o’ that bound 
girl o’ hers ? ’ ’ 

Puff shuddered. 

“ Don Plumy! You’re enough to scare the wits 
out of a body. Come, let’s go to sleep.” 

But the next day, being again on guard in Granny’s 
room, the conversation of the night before was re- 
called to the mind of the timid Partridge by the old 
woman’s disconnected mutterings, and creeping close 
to the bed, she asked curiously: 

‘ ‘ Say, Granny, who was the fox ? ’ ’ 


prue’s new bonnet. 87 

The old woman cackled gleefully — she evidently en- 
joyed the idea of that rarity, an interested listener: 

“ My little sister picked my bones, 

And buried me under the marble stones.” 

And she laughed again, with such satanic glee that, 
terrified, the girl scuttled back to her seat by the 
one window, just in time to escape the eye of her 
mistress, who, attracted by the old woman’s raised 
voice, had hastened to put a stop to her inconvenient 
chatter. 

‘ ‘ Do shut up, mother, ’ ’ she cried impatiently, and 
with a slight shake of the withered shoulder, “You 
make such a racket that you’ll disturb the customers.’’ 

“ Well, well,” grumbled the old creature viciously, 
“ Spos’n I do? Ye’d better bury me under the 
marble stones, hadn’ t ye ? ” 

Temper had actually given her the power to concoct 
an intelligible sentence, and her daughter stared at her 
for a moment, with a look that the suspicious Puff, 
decided in her own mind to be one of terrified guilt, 
although there was nothing unnatural in her tones, as 
she said, rather more sharply than was her wont: 

‘ ‘ Puff, you can come and help me now on the lin- 
ng of old Miss Lee’s bunnit, and let Plumy spell yo 
awhile here.” 

But the plumes of the Partridges had been rudely 
ruffled, while that peculiar instinct that prompts cer- 
tain natures to scent a mysterious horror in the most 
commonplace phenomena of nature, was thoroughly 
aroused, making the aimless babblings of a demented 


88 


QUEENSHITHE. 


old woman assume the dignity and importance of a 
varitable revelation, and awaking in their souls a burn- 
ing curiosity, with a determination to sift the matter 
so thoroughly that the evil, whatever it might be, 
should be unearthed, to the discomposure of the guilty 
party, and their own eternal glorification as the sharp- 
est and keenest-witted maidens in all Bestport 


CHAPTER VI. 


“MAN’S EXTREMITY.” 

HE winter came in that year early and fierce, and 



1 by the middle of November the air was thick 
with falling snow, that the weak rays of the far-off sun 
had no power to melt, as it filled up the hollows and lay 
an unbroken waste of chilly whiteness over all the 
dreary landscape. 

Even those favorite country merrymakings the 
jolly husking-bees, were for this time omitted, as the 
barns were too cold for the hardy buskers to find any 
pleasure in their pleasant toil, and the farmer and his 
boys worked with down turned caps and upturned coat- 
collars, at the monotonous task of stripping the dry 
husks from the ripened ears, while the gay crowd of 
lads and lasses that was wont at this season to crowd 
around the cider presses, to taste the honeyed nectar 
fresh from the fruit, and indulge in the rustic gallant- 
ries that such an occasion was sure to offer, was for 
once missing. 

Still there was no want of good cheer in the com- 
fortable farm-houses, and the great brick ovens groaned 
with their load of good things, prepared in anticipa- 
tion of the forthcoming day of public Thanksgiving 
to the Lord of the Harvest, the one day of all the 


90 


QUEENSHITHE. 


year that the genuine New Englander allowed himself 
to take his case, and feast to his heart’s content, undis- 
turbed by any twinges of conscience, or a fear of 
unfriendly comment from some more diligent neigh- 
bor. 

For the first time in all her life Roxy Rae could 
make no special preparation for this universal holiday, 
and although neither of the children referred to it, 
eating their frugal dinner of baked potatoes and fried 
salt pork, with as cheery an air as if it had been the 
prescribed turkey or chicken dinner with which the 
occasion had always been celebrated, even in their 
humble household, poor Roxy could not for the life 
of her keep back the tears that would not let her 
swallow a mouthful of the coarse, homely fare. 

Still, poverty and toil bravely shared are a wonderful 
strengthener of family ties, and it was after all a great 
comfort to the elder sister’s sore heart to see the cheer- 
ful courage with which the children accepted the 
unusual deprivation. 

“Do you know,” Sewell remarked, unbuttoning 
the brown jacket of an uncommonly mealy potatoe, 
and regarding the smoking tuber with an approving 
eye, ‘ ‘ do you know what I heard Deacon Potter say 
last night when I was waitin’ in the store for that salt 
you sent me for ? ” 

The girls looked up inquiringly. 

“Well, I heard him tell Nap Tinker, that’s been 
working for him, off and on, f’r years, that he 
shouldn’t want him after this month, the times was so 


prue’s new bonnet. 


91 


hard that he’d concluded to get along with a boy. 
Thinks I, ‘ Here’s a job for you, Sewell Rae,’ so 
when I got a chance, I jest said to the Deacon that, if 
he was going to hire a boy, I’d like a job.” 

‘ ' What did he say ? ’ ’ cried both girls in eager 
concert. 

“Well, you know the Deacon’s one o’ the slow 
kind, takes a good while to make up his mind, and 
f’r all of five minutes he never said a word, kept right 
on weighing sugar and tea, and doing up bundles, but 
at last, says he, in his good-natured way: ‘ Well, 
sonny, come up to the house to-morrow evenin’ and 
w’e’ll talk the matter over.’ ” 

“Oh Sewell, if you should get the chance!” and 
as Prue clapped her hands childishly, Roxy noted 
with a secret pain how very thin and transparent they 
had grown, the pretty plumpness of which she had 
been so proud was fast disappearing, and her heart 
stood still for a moment with a new and terrible 
anxiety. 

Could it be that Prue, who had inherited her 
mother’s delicacy of constitution along with her rare 
personal beauty, had begun to droop beneath this un- 
wonted weight of care and w’orry ? 

She remembered the fatal hectic upon her mother’s 
fair cheek, and with terrified eyes she searched the 
dear face opposite for the fatal sign. But Prue was 
now all animation, talking eagerly with Sewell upon 
the possibilities of his securing the place in the Dea- 
con’s store. 


92 


QUEENSHITHE. 


“ The very first thing that you will have to get is a 
pair of shoes for yourself, you can’t go back and forth 
through the snow in these old scows, and then — well, 
really, Roxy ought to have a new gown. If it can be 
contrived in any way. It’s too bad for her, hard as 
she works, to go with that old patched and darned 
bombazine, that was made out of grandmaam’s to be- 
gin with.” 

Roxy smiled through her scarce dried tears. 

‘ ‘ He hasn’ t got the place yet, ’ ’ she gently reminded 
them, “and if he does get it, I don’t believe the 
Deacon will pay him much more than will clothe him 
decently. You see, in a store, he’ll have to go better 
dressed than he would here to home. But,” re- 
assuringly, as she saw the disappointed look upon 
their bright young faces, ‘ •' If he earns enough to feed 
and clothe himself comfortably that will be a big lift 
to us all.” 

That night the girls sat up long after the usual hour, 
waiting in nervous expectation for Sewell’s return 
from his interview with the Deacon, and trying hard, 
when they at last caught the sound of his approaching 
steps, to interpret the news he brought by the haste or 
slowness of them. Prue flew to open the door, and 
one look at his shining face reassured the anxious 
watchers, even before he could find breath to say; 

“ Hooray! its all right. The Deacon has hired me 
for the winter at any rate, and he says,” pausing a 
moment to divest himself of cap and mittens, “ if I’m 
faithful and industrious, p’raps he’ll keep me right on 
and learn me the business.” 


prue’s new bonnet. 


93 


Roxy thought of that college scheme, that now 
seemed so utterly impracticable, and sighed softly, but 
she said nothing, and the boy went on excitedly: 

“ He’ll give me nine shillings a week and my board 
to begin with, and if he finds me worth it, he’ll raise 
my pay to two dollars, as soon as the times is a little 
easier. ’ ’ 

Prue exclaimed delightedly, but there was a note of 
disappointment in Roxy’s tones, as she said, with a 
fond look at the boy's glowing face: 

‘ ‘ I wish that he could have paid you enough so that 
you could a’ staid at home with us. The Deacon and 
his wife are real clever folks, and they’ll do as well by 
you as if you was their own, but I do hate to break 
up our own family.” 

Sewell laughed lightly. 

‘ ‘ Why Roxy ! ’ ’ and he caught his sister about her 
waist, and gave her a hug that would have done credit 
to a young bear; “’taint ten minutes walk from here 
to the Deacon’s, and I shall see you every day of our 
lives. Talk about breaking up the family, why, I’m 
goin’ to work on purpose to keep the family together. 
There’s only one thing,” and his boyish face was 
overclouded for a moment, ‘ ‘ and that is, I hate to 
take poor Nap Tinker’s place away from him. He 
looked dreadfully down in the mouth when I met him 
to-day, and no wonder, with that sick wife o’ his and 
their seven children — the oldest aint fourteen yet. I 
don’t see how they’re going to get through the winter, 
f ’r my part, for I don’t believe he’s been able to lay 


94 


QUEENSHITHE. 


up a cent — he’s weakly, and aint never had a man’s 
full wages.” 

Roxy shook her head with a troubled air. 

“ That seems to be most always the trouble, ’ she 
said thoughtfully. ” What’s one man's good fortune, 
seems to be another's loss. It’s just as if in climbing 
a ladder, you had to pull down the one above you to 
get his place, and that don’t seem right to me, some- 
how. There’s such a lot of work to do in the world, 
that there ought to be something for everybody to do. 
Now the Deacon’s a well-to-do man, and has a good 
many irons in the fire, and it seems to me that he 
might find work for both of you to do, without any 
loss to himself.” 

Sewell rubbed his hands, and looked thoughtfully 
into the fire. 

“ I heard him tell Mis Potter that he’d offered Nap 
a job at peelin’ bark, if he’d take his pay out o’ the 
store, but he hadn’t said whether he’d try it or not.” 

“ The poor man is half crippled with rheumatism,” 
observed Prue, “and workin’ in the woods, with the 
snow up to his knees half the time, wouldn’t be a very 
payin’ job for him, I shou’d say. But, Sewell, do 
you s’ pose Phebe Potter’ll ask us to any of her parties 
this winter ? She did, to one or two last winter, but 
Roxy hadn’t anything decent to wear, and I wouldn’t 
go without her.” 

And thus diverted from the subject of poor Nap 
Tinker’s troubles, the little group chatted cheerfully, 
planning and contriving, with sisterly pride, how to 


PRUE S NEW BONNET. 


95 


make the boy’s scant wardrobe look decent and re- 
spectable in the eyes of his employer and his family. 

Quick and willing, the lad soon proved himself a 
useful helper in the store, while his unvarying good 
nature and natural courtesy made him a prime favorite 
in the pleasant home, presided over by the Deacon’s 
comely wife, who, in her turn, was completely under 
the rule of her pretty daughter, the youngest and only 
unmarried one of her numerous flock. That it was to 
Phebe Potter, although indirectly, that Sewell owed 
his position in her father’s store, he had not the least 
idea, and yet such was the case, for, had it not been 
for that young woman’s housewifely vanity, Napoleon 
Tinker would still have been weighing sugar and tea 
at the familiar counter, while Sewell would, without 
doubt have been occupying himself with the honest, 
but by no means profitable employment of running 
errands for the neighborhood, with an occasional job 
at shelling corn or beans for some idly disposed farmer. 

For several years past, the girl had labored hard 
but in vain to convince her father that the furniture of 
the “front room’’ which, spick and span, on his 
marriage day, had been the admiration of the town, 
was now too shabby and old fashioned to be decent, 
and that a newer and more modern carpet, with other 
accessories in the shape of window draperies and a 
sofa, were absolutely essential to the respectibility of 
the establishment. This fall she had made up her 
mind to a final and decisive effort, and aided and 
abetted by her indulgent mother, had decided upon a 


96 


QUEENSHITHE. 


plan that, she felt sure, — knowing her father’s peculi- 
arities, — could not fail of success. 

Very wisely she approached the subject, by declar- 
ing her determination to do the fall spinning herself, 
instead of hiring Plumy Partridge as usual. 

“I can save that much,” she modestly declared, 
‘ ‘ and with such a hard winter before us, every little 
saved counts.” 

The Deacon was delighted, for this matter of hiring 
the spinning done, had been a bone of contention in 
the family ever since Miss Phebe, having arrived at 
woman’s estate, had strongly objected to doing it her- 
self. And now he patted her head admiringly: 

‘ ‘ That’ s a good, sensible girl, ’ ’ he said, ‘ ‘ and you’ 11 
deserve a new gown, the first time I go to Boston.” 

Miss Phebe smiled, and shook her curly head de- 
cidedly: 

‘ ‘ Oh, land, no ! I don’ t really need a new gown, 
father, — but if you want to make me the very happiest 
girl in all Bestport,” — and a plump arm crept coax- 
ingly about the good Deacon’s neck, — “get me those 
things that I’ve been wanting so long for the best 
room. It won’t cost such a dreadful sight of money 
after all, and a good set, such as I want, ought to last 
a lifetime. Don’t say no,” she insisted, as he tried to 
speak, “just let me tell you of a way in which it can 
be done, and you none the worse off, after all. Why 
can’t you let Tinker go, and get a good, smart boy to 
help you in the store this winter? You say that it’ll 
be a hard winter, and if so, trade’ll be dull, and a 


prue’s new bonnet. 


97 


boy’ll be all the help you’ll need. Now reckon up 
what you’ll save in that way, and what I’ll save on the 
spinning, and you’ll find that together we’ll save pretty 
near enough to get the things we want for the parlor. ’ ’ 

The Deacon hemmed and hawed, but he was fairly 
caught, for we all know that a problem social or do- 
mestic, mathematically worked out, can not be dis- 
puted, and half reluctantly, he yielded to his daughter’s 
wishes, dismissed poor Tinker, installed Sewell in his 
place, and took upon his own shoulders a number of 
extra duties that, owing to his advancing years, he had 
felt himself excusable in delegating to his employee. 

He was a kind hearted man, and it cost him no little 
regret to turn off the clerk who, if somewhat incapable, 
had been honestly devoted to his interests, but really 
there seemed no help for it as things stood now, and 
nobody could blame him for trying to retrench some- 
what these hard times. That his love for his pretty 
daughter, and his natural desire to please her should 
influence him to take from his neighbor his actual 
means of subsistance never even occurred to him as a 
wrong or unchristian act. Perfectly familiar as he was 
with our Lord’s saying: “He who loveth son or 
daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me,” he had 
never dreamed that it could be applied to his own case. 
No indeed , — that was meant, beyond doubt for the 
strengthening of those sorely tempted early Christians, 
who, in proclaiming their love for the despised Naz- 
arene, tore asunder the tenderest ties of human rela- 
tionship, and to find Christ lost all of earthly love and 
honor, — everything that had made this life enjoyable. 


98 


QUEENSHITHE. 


He was a good man, benevolent, kind hearted, and 
conscientious, but that doctrine of the divided coats 
had not yet reached his inner consciousness. He 
would have felt that he had the right to both coats, so 
long as the chances of trade and barter enabled him to 
indulge in that number, while his needy neighbor 
would have been perfectly welcome to any odd waist- 
coat for which he had himself no farther need, and it 
really went to his heart when, one day in surly mid- 
winter, he saw the whole family of his former clerk, — 
the father included, — crowded into a rough pung, drive 
past the store, en route for the poorhouse. 

Nat Graves, who chanced to be standing by the 
door, glanced thoughtfully through the glass panel, 
and in reply to the Deacon’s pitying ejaculations, re- 
marked dryly: 

‘ ‘ There goes the last chance for makin’ men out of 
the Tinkers. ’ ’ 

The Deacon looked at him inquiringly: 

“Yes, this N’poleon Tinker’s the only one o’ the 
whole tribe that’s ever made any shift to take care of 
himself These things run in the blood, and the Tin- 
kers are naterally a breed o’ paupers. Now this man’s 
mother was a Twiggs, — one o’ the Gouldsboro Twiggs, 
an honest, hard workin’ lot, — and this son of hers has 
got something of her in him, or he wouldn’t a’ fit shy 
o’ the poorhouse so long as he has. Now he’s gone 
the way of all the rest, and if he lives to come out in 
the spring, he’ll have lost all self respect and ambition, 
while his children will grow up with the stain o’ the 


prue’s new bonnet. 


99 


poorhouse on ’em, and the town ’ll have Tinkers to 
support till the race dies out.” 

” He had a job of peelin’ bark, — ” began the Dea- 
con, but the other interrupted him: 

“Yes, I know all about that, — a. weakly man, fit for 
nothin’ but indoor work, and half fed at that, aint 
likely to thrive on peelin’ bark out in the woods, with 
the weather cold enough to take the hair right off o’ 
yer scalp, and nothin’ but thin summer clo’es to pro- 
tect ’im. That’s where he got the rhumatic fever that 
laid ’im up, so’t they had to call on the town for help. 
You might jest as well expect a toothless dog to thrive 
on brown bread crusts, as to set a man at gettin’ a 
livin’ out o’ what he aint fitted for, and can’t do, let 
him try ever so hard.” 

The Deacon rubbed his lean knee regretfully: 

“ I wish’t I’d known they was so hard up,” he said, 
then sinking his voice, and looking as sheepish as a 
schoolboy caught stealing apples, he added: “I did 
give ’em a barrel o’ flour, and some pork and codfish 
the first o’ the winter, f’r I mistrusted they’d be havin’ 
a pretty tight squeeze to get through the cold weather, 
and if I’d known I’d — ” 

“Of course you would. Deacon, — you needn’t tell 
me that you’d put yer hand down deep into yer pocket 
any time to help a neighbor in distress, everybody 
knows that, shy as you are about yer alms-giving,” 

And the good fellow laughed mischievously at his 
friend’s embarressment, for none knew better than he 
how literally the kindly old man obeyed the injunction 
to do his alms in secret, and not to be seen of men. 


lOO 


QUEENSHITHE. 


“But, Deacon,” and he tapped thoughtfully upon 
the edge of the counter against which he was leaning, 
“in such a case, givin’ is like pourin’ water into a 
seive, you’ve got to keep on pouriri! , or they’re right 
back agin in the same hard sleddin’. Do you know 
that the poorhouse aint never been so full as ’tis this 
winter ? ’ ’ 

Graves was one of the selectmen of the town, and 
as such, an authority upon town matters, — the Deacon 
nodded intelligently: 

“It’s a hard winter,” he sighed. “ We aint seen 
nothin’ like it f’r the last ten years, at least.” 

“Jest so, — and that means heavier taxes.” 

“ Ye-es, I s’ pose so, — of course it does.” 

‘ ‘ And you’ re one o’ the largest tax payers in town. 
Now there’s N’poleon Tinker, and his wife, and seven 
children, — not one of ’em in decent shape to do a 
stroke o’ work, on account o’ the hard grind they’ve 
been through, and what you’ll have to pay, as an indi- 
vidual, to’ards their support, — includin’ the doctor’s 
bill, of course, — would a’ gone a long ways towards 
payin’ the poor man’s wages here in the store. And 
that aint the worst of it, by a long chalk. What little 
manhood he had in ’im ’ll be pauperized out of ’im, 
instead o’ being encouraged as ’twould a’ been if he’d 
had the chance, however small, to earn an honest livin’. 
And I wouldn’t be afraid to bet a good deal (if I was 
a bettin’ man, ) that your children, and grandchildren, 
and great grandchildren, perhaps, ’ll have to help sup- 
port pauper Tinkers, long after you an’ I are dust.” 

The Deacon scratched his head reflectively: 


prue’s new bonnet. 


lOI 


“Well, — I declare! if that aint an idea that never 
struck me in that light before. But,” with a sudden 
brightening, “there’s Sewell , — he needed the place 
full as bad as Nap did, far’s I can see.” 

“Couldn’t you have found work for both, and let 
your old bones have a little of the rest they need, at 
your time o’ life ? ’ ’ 

“ Ye-es, I spose so. But you see, trade’s dull, and, 
— well, the fact is. I’d promised my women folks that 
I’d get some new fixin’s f’r the best room, in the 
spring, and I really felt as if I must economize, to do 
it with a clear conscience. You see how ’tis? ” 

“ Of course /do, but how do you s’ pose it looks to 
that poor feller on his hard bed, over to the poorhouse ? 
More’n likely he’d be unreasonable enough to think 
that the new furnitoor could a’ waited a year or two 
longer, better than he could stand bein’ thrown on the 
town, f’r want of a job, that he was willing and anxious 
to do.” 

Sewell had listened to this conversation with the 
keen interest of a bright, thoughtful boy, and that 
evening, sitting before the fire in his own home, with 
Roxy alone for company, — Prue had fallen into a habit 
of late, of creeping off to bed long before the usual 
hour, — he repeated, in substance, the arguments put 
forward by Nat Graves in the matter of a man’s duty, 
as an honest citizen, to do all in his power to prevent 
pauperism. As he talked, Roxy’s tears fell silently, 
and as he concluded with: 

“ I’m so glad that there aint never been any paupers 


102 


QUEENSHITHE. 


in our family. I b’lieve I’d jest about starve before 
I’d ask the town’s help, unless I was so old or sick 
that I couldn' t 

The sobs that she could no longer suppress shook 
her from head to foot, as she cried wildly: 

“But to see the one you love better’ n your own life 
fadin’ away before your very eyes just for want of 
nourishin’ food. That makes you forget pride and the 
speech o’ people, — everything, but how and where 
you’ re goin’ to get her what she must have, or — die, ’ ’ 

The boy’s face was white even to his lips, as cross- 
ing over to where his sister sat, he put his arm ten- 
derly about her shoulders, and laid his cheek, with a 
half-suppressed sob upon her bowed head. 

“ Oh Roxy! is it so bad as 

She nodded, for she could not speak. 

“ And here am I,’’ he cried bitterly, “livin’ on the 
fat o’ the land — setting down three times a day to a 
table fairly crowded with good things, while you and 
little True’’ — 

He broke down completely, and Roxy was aroused 
from her own helpless grief to play her usual part Oi 
comforter. 

“ Don’t take on so child! You aint to blame be- 
cause the Deacon sets a good table for his family and 
help. And then, really, we haven’t gone hungry,, you 
know, for there’s plenty of potatoes, and pork, and 
meal in the house, only Prue has been kind of ailin’ 
of late, ever since she took that dreadful cold pickin’ 
over husks in Mis Cornishes’ barn, and that makes 


prue’s new bonnet. 


103 


her kind of fussy about her vitdes, so she’s all the 
time pinin’ for things that I can’t get. Eggs are high, 
and I’ve tried everywhere to buy a chicken and pay 
for it in work, but nobody has any to spare, or any 
work to do, for that matter. I’m workin’ now on a 
muslin cape that’ll be a beauty when it’s done, but I 
don’ t know who in the world will buy it for anything 
like what it’s worth.” 

Sewell sighed dejectedly: 

‘ ‘ If I only had a little money of my own, but I had 
to have so many new things to wear when I went into 
the store that the Deacon advanced the money for, 
and I aint got it al paid up yet,” 

“Yes, yes, I understand all aboift that,” his sister 
hastened to explain, “and I didn’t mean to burden 
you with my troubles, but somehow my heart got so 
full that it couldn’t hold any more, and I had to speak 
out to somebody, I couldn’t bear it alone noi longer.” 

“It’s awful to be so poor, ’’muttered the boy, with a 
touch of natural irritability, “and there’s Dorindy, 
the old thief! pilin’ up the money, hand over fist, that, 
by good rights should belong to you. But I guess, 
after all,” he added, in a tone of undeniable satisfac- 
tion, “ that she’s got a hornet in her nest that’ll sting 
'er into rememberin’ her sins, if nothin’ else does.” 

Roxy looked up inquiringly, her tear-stained face 
^fxpressing a languid curiosity. 

“ What do you mean ? I haven’t heard anything.” 

“ Why, I heard Mis Potter and Phebe talking about 
it, and they said that the Partridge girls got mad with 


104 


QUEENSHITHE. 


her becaused she didn’t do the square thing by them, 
struck off work, and wouldn’t serve their time out, 
and now they’re rakin’ up that old story about the 
widder’s makin’ away with Peg. Plumy told Phebe 
the other day that she could prove that the child was 
murdered and buried in the cellar, and that she’d 
swear to it in any court o’ justice in the land. ’ ’ 

“ Cat’s foot! ” cried Roxy, with scornful incredulity 
“That’s too ridiculous for anybody in their sober 
senses to believe. Besides, didn’t she come to me 
that very night she disappeared and say good-bye ? 
'Tain’t likely she went right back and put ’erself into 
Dorindy’s hands to be killed.” 

“ I told Mis Potter about that, and she hinted, 
didn’t say right out, for she’s a dretful cautious 
woman, and never likes to commit herself, but she 
hinted that it might be a spirit that you saw ruther’ n 
the child hersdf. She said that ’twaant an uncom- 
mon thing for murdered folks to come back to say 
good-bye to their friends, or haunt their murderer. 

“I don’t believe a word of it,” persisted Roxy, 
whose strong sense of justice overbore her natural re- 
sentment against her rival. 

‘ ‘ Dorindy’ s harsh and hard as shingle nails, espec_ 
ially in a business way, but she aint a monster, to go 
to work deliberately and plan a murder^ — that’s too 
unlikely. ’ ’ 

Sewell wagged his head with a non-commital air. 
There was something fascinating in the ghostly possi- 
bility hinted by the Deacon’s wife, and so long as it 


prue’s new bonnet. 


105 


was Dorindy who was under suspicion, he thoroughly 
enjoyed retailing the gossip that he had picked up 
from various sources. 

“As to that, I guess nobody really thinks she 
killed ’er a’ purpose. The ginral idea seems to be 
that she got mad and struck ’er harder’ n she meant 
to, and when she found she was dead, she was so 
scared that she hid her body in the cellar. Nat 
Graves says he saw her one night with his own eyes, 
make Peg, who was walkin’ in her sleep, do all sorts 
o’ things, knit and braid straw ” — 

“What?” 

Roxy’s cheeks glowed, and an eager light burned in 
her dark eyes, as she cried excitedly: 

“ That’s it! I see now how Dorindy got the secret 
of that braid out of the child, and I — I blamed the 
poor little thing, and called her a traitor in my heart. 

Her voice was tremulous with emotion, and she 
scarcely heeded The boy’s concluding words, in her 
glad surprise over this unlooked for proof of Peg’s 
innocence. 

‘ ‘ Graves said he trembled at the time, for fear the 
child would wake up while she was to work on her, 
f’r he could see by her face that she was terribly 
strung up, and wouldn’t really sense what she was 
about; supposin’ the girl should wake up at the wrong 
minute. ’ ’ 

Poor little Peg! And long after Sewell was gone, 
Roxy sat alone over the decaying fire, no longer ab- 
sorbed in her own anxieties and cares, but fruitlessly 


io6 


QUEENSHITHE. 


wondering over the child’s mysterious disappearance, 
and hoping almost against hope, that the wretched, 
sorely wronged outcast might have found some friendly 
shelter for her unprotected head. 


CHAPTER VII. 


“ IS GOD’S OPPORTUNITY.” 

I ^HE fact is, she’s sick and notional, and won’t 

1 hear to havin’ anybody tend out on ’er but 
you.” 

Captain Sol looked appealingly into Roxy’s grate- 
ful face, as if instead of conferring a favor, he was 
humbly soliciting one. 

“You see I’ve got to start f’r New York by to- 
morrow at the fartherest, and now I’ve turned that 
thievin’ old Bet Wiggins adrift, I’m bound to leave 
things shipshape in the home craft, and with you at 
the helium, and that Partridge lass — the pretty one — 
in the steward’s berth, I don’t see no reason why it 
shouldn’t be plain sailin’ whilst I’m away.” 

Roxy smiled, and a warm glow overspread her wan 
face as she said timidly: 

“ I’ll be only too glad to go if — if I can take Prue 
along with me. You can reckon her board to me,” 
she added hastily, lest their good friend should think 
for an instant that she wanted to foist her sister upon 
them as a condition of her own acceptance of the 
welcome task of caring for the Captain’s sick wife. 

Yes, yes, of course^ that’s understood. Mis Bardin 
told me to tell you that she had a whole barrel of 


I08 QUEENSHITHE. 

carpet rags waitin’ to be sewed, and if Prue wanted 
to, she could work her passage on them.” 

That night, two of the most grateful hearts in all 
Bestport sent up a prayer of thanksgiving to the 
Father in Heaven, who had sent his angel in the per- 
son of a sturdy, weather-beaten, Yankee skipper, to 
shut the mouth of the dreaded wolf at their door, and 
reassure their failing trust in His oft-repeated 
promises of protection to the fatherless and unde- 
fended. 

Mrs. Barden, or “Mis Cap’n Sol,” as the country 
folk called her, had been ill all through the winter, of 
a low, nervous fever, that had left her weak, whimsical, 
and often hard to please, although the Captain had 
dutifully spent the weeks of an uncommonly long va- 
cation from his sea duties, in constant attendance upon 
her, humoring all her whims, and puzzling his some- 
what clumsy wits in a vain attempt to invent dishes to 
tempt her mental as well as her bodily appetite. But 
it had been up-hill work, and now that the summons 
had come for him to rejoin his vessel, it was the in- 
valid herself who had proposed installing Roxy Rae 
as her nurse and companion. 

“ She’s a good, sensible littie soul, knows when to 
speak, and when to hold her tongue,” was Mrs. Sol’s 
blunt summary of the girl’s qualifications, and the 
good Captain never dreamed of resenting the scathing 
emphasis placed by his outspoken helpmeet upon the 
concluding item. He had done his best, and he 
knew how to make allowance for the unreasonable 


prue’s new bonnet. 


109 


pettishness of sick folks, and now with a lightened 
heart, he bade adieu to home and home ties, and 
sailed away for a three-months voyage, serenely un- 
conscious that, in a small way he was helping to carry 
out the great scheme of mutual helpfulness upon 
which the prosperity of a whole world ever has, and 
ever must depend. 

To the two girls, their transfer from a life of pinch- 
ing economies and wearing anxieties, to the cheery 
atmosphere of Cap’n Sol’s well ordered home, was 
like being translated bodily into another sphere, and 
even the sick woman’s occasional fretfulness never in 
the least disturbed the serenity of her patient little 
nurse, whose bright face was, unconsciously, a better 
tonic to the depressed invalid than all the bitter messes 
that the village doctor so faithfully dosed her with. 

It was pleasant too, to have somebody to whom she 
could talk of her travels and sight-seeings, for the 
Captain’s wife, with nothing to detain her in her child- 
less home, had for years, accompanied her husband 
upon most of his voyages, and having a good sharp 
pair of eyes in her very sensible head, she had seen 
enough of the world to make her a very entertaining 
companion when in a talkative mood. Especially did 
she enjoy holding forth upon her recent experiences in 
Washington, where the Captain’s schooner had been 
employed during the past season in carrying lumber 
for the new capital, which was then in process of erec- 
tion upon the banks of the Potomac. 

Mrs. Sol had therefore had occasion to spend 


no 


QUEENSHITHE. 


considerable time in the new city, and if one might trust 
her word, had penetrated into most of the ins and 
outs of the governmental machinery, and was, if not 
exactiy intimate, sufhciendy well acquainted with the 
heads of the various departments to stand a fair 
chance of success in any project that she might under- 
take or interest herself in. 

“You’d be astonished,” she declared, “to find 
how kind of easy and homefolksey them big bugs air 
when you really come to know ’em. 

“Why, I’ve seen President Jefferson, with my own 
eyes, stop right in the road, and pat a little darkey on 
the head, (that was cryin’ because he’d tumbled 
down, an’ barked his shin, ) and drop a sixpence into 
his hand, jest as any common man would. Why, ’f 
I wanted a favor, I’d ask it o’ him ’nuff sight quicker’ n 
I would o’ one o’ them puffed up critters that set up 
behind on the rich folks’ team, with their gold lace, 
and their cocked hats, lookin’ f ’r all the world, with 
their big eyes starin’ straight ahead, like a green- 
backed frog jest ready to bust with the dropsy. ’ ’ 

Roxy smiled rather doubtfully as she smoothed 
with a practiced hand the pillow against which Mrs. 
Sol’s nightcapped head was leisurely reclining. 

“ I should be kind o’ skittish, seems ter me, about 
troublin’ the President with my small affairs. He 
must be kept pretty busy, I shou’d think, with so 
many things to tend to all over the country. ’ ’ 

She was thinking of Squire Biddle’s “crusher,” 
in the matter of her applying for a patent, and the 


prue’s new bonnet. 


Ill 


assured tone of the skipper’s wife had puzzled rather 
than reassured her. 

Mrs. Sol bestirred herself, for this insinuation put 
her upon her mettle as a true daughter of the Repub- 
lic, to whom such a hint of personal unimportance 
must not be allowed to pass unrebuked. 

“Land sakes alive, child! what’s he there for, I 
shou’d like to know? Didn’t we all put in and elect 
him on purpose to see that every man, woman and 
child in this great, free land, has his or her rights ? 
Talk about anything bein’ big or little, if it affects the 
interests of a citizen of this country it’s wuth attendin’ 
to. That’s what’s meant by all men bein’ free and 
equal, and Nap Tinker has jest the same right to be 
protected in his line as Square Biddle has in his. 
And let me tell you this,” with a wag of her head that 
spoke volumes, ‘ ‘ if ever there should be a President of 
this Republic that ’d let his party or personal feelin’s 
get the better of his love f’r the country, that man 
would deserve to have his name handed down ’long- 
side of Benedick Arnold’s, as an out an’ out traitor 
to the land that bore ’im.” 

The good woman spoke with feeling, for people at 
that period of our history had a high ideal of the 
character to be borne by the chief executive of the 
nation, moreover they had a homely fashion of calling 
a spade a spade, certain convenient catchwords fa- 
miliar to the politicians of our own day not having 
been at that time invented. 

We may smile at these pronounced republican ideas 


112 


QUEENSHITHE. 


on the part of an obscure Yankee skipper’s wife, but 
at that early day, when newspapers were a rarity, and 
the telegraph, and steam engine things of the future, 
a voyage from Maine to Washington was looked upon 
as an important event in a person’s life, and the ob- 
servations of so extensive a traveler as Mrs. Sol carried 
great weight in the eyes of her stay-at-home neighbors. 
So Roxy treasured them up, and secretly pondered 
them in her heart, until by degrees, her plans and 
hopes assumed a definite form, although with character- 
istic caution, she kept them a secret even from Prue. 
As for that small woman, her sister noted with ever 
growing satisfaction, the returning roses upon her softly 
rounded cheek, and the old manner, half playful, half 
petulant, that had replaced the unnatural gravity and 
sad submissiveness of those past weeks of privation 
and anxiety. That the girl found an attractive com- 
panion in Plumy Partridge did not at first trouble her 
sister in the least. Plumy was pretty and chatty, and 
gifted with a good deal of natural vivacity that made 
her an amusing comrade for the younger girl, who 
thought her the perfect embodiment of wit and good 
nature. To be sure, Prue’s honest prejudices were a 
good deal shocked, now and then, by specimens of 
Miss Plumy’s diplomatic skill in evading deserved re- 
proof, or when, having carelessly broken a chip from 
the side of her mistress’ best glass preserve dish, she 
put it carefully away upon an upper shelf, with a light 
laugh, and the complacent: 

“ She’ll find it broke after sne gets round, 'and she 
never’ 11 be the wiser as to who did it.” 


prue’s new bonnet. 


II3 


Honest Prue ventured for once to remonstrate: 

“ If /V broken a nice dish like that, I should think 
I’d ought to pay for it. You know you hadn’t ought 
to have used it for apple-sauce, when she’s so choice 
of it, and only puts it on the table when she has com- 
pany. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Pay for it ! ” repeated Plumy with a laugh. ‘ ‘ Then 
you wouldhe a bigger fool than I took you for. Why, 
she has twenty dollars to my one, and can bear the loss 
a good deal better than I could.” 

‘ ‘ But you broke it, ’ ’ insisted Prue. 

“Well, what if I did? I shan’t pay for it, — you 
may bet your bottom dollar on that. She’s mighty 
lucky to get me to work for ’er anyway, — ^fussy old 
thing I — and if I hadn’t had that flare-up with the 
widder Jeff, I wouldn’t gone out doin’ housework this 
winter. As ’tis. I’m going to take it jest as easy as I 
can, the Capn’s agreed to pay me so much, and I don’t 
mean to kill myself with work, as long’s I’m queen o’ 
the kitchen, with nobody to say ‘ why do ye so ? ’ ” 

“But you’re such a good housekeeper. Plumy,” 
urged Prue, trying her best to sugar coat her pill with 
words of deserved praise, “that I shouldn’t think 
you’d want to slight your work just because Mis Bar- 
den can’t come into the kitchen, to oversee you. And, 
honestly, it don’t seem righty when you’re takin’ her 
money, not to give her a fair day’s work for it.” 

“As to that,” flouted the girl, with heightened 
color, and a pout that sat but illy upon her overfull 
lip, “ folks that are poor, and have to work f’r a livin’ 


QUEENSHITHE. 


II4 

have got to take care of themselves, or, let me tell 
you, they’ll come out o’ the little end o’ the horn. 
The rich always have and always will crowd the poor 
wherever they can, and if you can get even with ’em, 
/say, do it, every time.” 

That this view of the proper relations between em- 
ployer and employee, as set forth by the astute serving 
maid, had no ill effect upon Prue was evident, for she 
sewed day by day, with the most commendable dili- 
gence, never slacking her work because she was not 
under the mistress’ very eye, and finding a girlish 
pleasure in the selection of the shades that would best 
blend in the completed whole. Indeed, it was an 
altogether different matter that, in time, aroused Roxy’s 
sisterly anxieties, and went far to influence her decision 
in regard to certain questions already secretly agitating 
her thoughts in regard to their future. 

It was not long after their installation in their new 
quarters, that, one afternoon, while Mrs. Sol was taking 
her usual nap, Prue putting her head in at the door, 
beckoned her sister from the room, and with blushes 
and laughter, called her attention to herself with: 

‘ ‘ How do you like it, Roxy ? ’ ’ 

Roxy looked, and at first sight, didn’t like it at all. 
The girl’s sunny curls had all been drawn back from 
her face, and fastened in a most astonishing knot upon 
the very top of her childish head, while about her face, 
extending from ear to ear, was a row of little flat, rings 
of hair, arranged with wonderful care and skill, and 
known in country parlance by the enticing name of 
“beau catchers.” 


prue’s new bonnet. 


II5 

“Why Prue! “ exclaimed the elder sister, scarce 
knowing whether to laugh or cry at the strange trans- 
formation, ‘ ‘ how funny you do look ! What, in the 
world, possessed you to make such a scarecrow of 
yourself? ” 

The small maiden bridled, and cast a look of blush- 
ing approval at her reflection in the glass opposite. 

“ Plumy did it up for me, and she says,” with just 
a touch of defiance, “that it’s very becoming, and 
that I’m plenty old enough to wear my hair done up 
like other girls. ’ ’ 

“She looks as pretty as a picture,” put in Plumy 
officiously, “ and /say its too bad to keep a great girl 
like her with her hair all down in her neck, settin’ in 
the chimney corner, sewin’ rags from sunrise to sunset, 
without givin’ her a chance to show herself outside, 
like other girls. It aint none o’ my business, to be 
sure,” — and the Partridge assumed an air of virtuous 
candor, — “but it does seem as if a girl with Prue’s 
good looks, ought to have her chance in the market 
with the rest.” 

Roxy’s cheeks burned hotly, and a sharp answer 
was upon her tongue, when Prue eagerly took up the 
refrain : 

‘ ‘ And Roxy dear, if you only would let me leave 
off tyers, and — and, there’s that brooch that was 
mother's, — if I could wear that sometimes, I should 
be ever so — happy y 

‘ ‘ Of course she would, ’ ’ appended Plumy, with a 
worldly-wise air that, somehow, nettled Roxy even 


Ii6 


QUEENSHITHE. 


more than her words had done. ‘ ‘ All girls like to 
dress up, and look pretty, — it’s in ’em, and you can’t 
argue it out of ’em.” 

Roxy looked mutely from one to the other, her brain 
in a perfect whirl, and her heart beating hot within 
her, at this sudden blow, for it was a blow to find the 
child who had hitherto never dreamed of taking 
counsel with another than herself, listening to the ful- 
some flatteries of this coarse minded girl, and at her 
suggestion, longing to throw aside, like an outgrown 
garment, the innocent childishness that had been so 
beautiful and unaffected in its pure simplicity, and come 
down to the level of these smirking, giggling girls, of 
which Plumy herself was so true a representative. 

Still, and she acknowledged the unwelcome fact with 
a sigh, there was really nothing to blame the child for, 
in this reaching out of her woman’s nature to grasp 
the toys for which her sex instinctively long, as with 
trembling yet eager feet, they linger upon the threshold 
of maidenhood. Only, if the awakening had come in 
the common course of nature, — or if a hand gentler 
than that of Mrs. Barden’s handmaid had hastened the 
unfolding of the bud, she could have borne it better. 
So she whispered to herself, with bitter tears, as, in 
the privacy of her own chamber that night, she went 
over the events of the day, and tried hard to school 
herself to meet this new phase in her domestic cares. 

Perhaps it was her own lack of personal attractive- 
ness, added to the fact that, heretofore every energy 
of her nature had been directed toward one object, — 


prue’s new bonnet. 1 17 

the care of those dependent upon her, — that had robbed 
her of many of the natural desires and longings of a 
healthy girlhood, and this sudden awakening to the 
fact that Prue was no longer a child, but a woman, 
with all a woman’s natural longing for recognition and 
a place among her mates, came to her with a painful 
suddenness that, at the first, made it impossible for her 
to adjust herself to the new order of things, and moved 
her all unconsciously to shrink within herself, with a 
chilly solitariness that Prue, misunderstanding, resented 
bitterly. 

Why should Roxy turn the cold shoulder to her just 
because she wanted to dress and look like others of 
her age and neighborhood ? And although she indig- 
nantiy repelled Plumy’s unworthy suggestion that the 
elder sister wanted to keep the younger in pinafores so 
as not to emphasize the fact of her own old maidism, 
she yet allowed herself to think hard things of that 
loving, patient nature, whose one thought and purpose 
in life was her good and happiness. And Roxy, far 
from blaming the girl for her petulant unreason, set 
herself all the more dilligently to contrive some way 
by which she could meet the demands that must inevit- 
ably be made upon her in the near future. Prue was 
no longer a child, to be satisfied with a child’s inex- 
pensive desires, and some way must be devised by 
which the larger needs of her life could be met, and, 
rendered bold by the very desperation of love, the 
elder sister ventured to unfold her plan to Mrs. Sol, 
after the roundabout fashion of her race and day. 


ii8 


QUEENSHITHE. 


‘ ‘ I wonder how much that woman you stop with in 
Washington, would be likely to charge a single woman 
for board for, — well, say a couple of weeks? ” 

Mrs. Sol started, and looked keenly into the girPs 
anxious face. 

“Oh well, I can’t say exactly, but ’twouldn’t be 
much, anyway. She’s a reasonable body. Mis Mc- 
Greggor is, if she does talk a foreign lingo, and wear 
a cap, (‘curch,’ she calls it,) with a great floppin’ 
border, big enough f’r a ship’s mains’ 1. She lets 
rooms to transients, and a body can board ’erself, and 
live as cheap as she wants to.” 

“ And — well, how much would the Cap’n charge f’r 
a passage in his vessel, do you s’ pose? ” 

“ Nothin’, — Xoyour^ cried the good woman indig- 
nantly. “The fact is, Roxy,” — and the girl was sur- 
prised at the unwonted tenderness in the speaker’s 
voice, for Mrs. Sol was not one to allow herself to 
descend (?) to endearments, either in word or act, — 
“such care as you’ve given me can’t be paid for in 
money, and I aint one o’ the kind that believes in 
payin’ off debts o’ that sort in soft words. But there’s 
one thing that I want you to remember, and that is, 
that when you want a favor of a friend, you come 
straight to me, and I’ll do anything in the world, — 
within the bounds o’ reason, of course, — to help you. 
And Roxy,” — ^she sank her voice to a whisper, glanc- 
ing suspiciously at the closed door beyond which the 
gay clatter of girlish voices sounded with pleasant in- 
distinctness, — “ if you want to go to Washinton with 


prue’s new bonnet. 


II9 

US in the spring, it shan’t cost you a red cent, and I’ll 
put you in the way of gettin’ that patent on your 
braid, if I have to go to the President himself, and get 
him to see about it.” 

Roxy smiled, but her eyes were full of grateful 
tears, as she murmured her thanks for such unlooked 
for generosity. But Mrs, Sol, like the kings of old, 
was not content with providing a conveyance for her 
favorite, to the ‘ ‘ kings’ mule ’ ’ must be added also 
the “raiment that the king useth to wear,” that the 
royal benefaction might be complete. 

‘ ‘ Now you go right up stairs, ’ ’ she commanded, 
with an arbitrariness that left no room for questioning, 

‘ ‘ and in that big blue chist, in the chamber over the 
kitchen, you’ll find a cambric o’ mine, — a white ground, 
with pink dots, — and the breadths of my puce colored 
rattinet. To be sure, I’d lotted on makin’ that over 
for myself, to travel in, but the Cap’n always hated 
the sight of it, so I guess you might as well have it, 
and I’ll wear my invisible green pongee on shipboard. 
Anyhow, you bring ’em both down, and hand me the 
scissors, — I really think ’twould do me good to rip a 
little.” 

Roxy obeyed, indeed, there was nothing to do but 
to obey the Captain’s wife, who was quite as much of 
a martinet in her own house as was her sturdy mate 
on shipboard, and having now fully decided that Roxy 
was to accompany them to Washington, she looked 
upon it as a bounden duty to see that the girl was re- 
spectably, even fashionably clad, according to the ideas 


120 


QUEENSHITHE. 


of her eiay and neighborhood. Although prudent, as 
befitted her New England birth and training, Mrs. Sol 
was not what her neighbors would call a “snug” 
woman, and being well to do, she felt that she could 
afford, for once, to exercise a generosity in the way of 
certain long hoarded bits of girlish finery, that fairly 
bewildered the recipient, and awoke in her, for the first 
time in all her lifej some touches of womanly vanity, — 
a weakness that her friend certainly encouraged. 

‘ ‘ Now, Roxy, ’ ’ she declared, with unconcealed 
satisfaction, as one after another of the completed gar- 
ments w’ere tried on, and pronounced a “perfect fit,” 
“now Roxy, I don’t want to make you proud, but I 
can conscientiously say this much, that, when you’re 
dressed up, like other girls, you look as welly every 
mite an' grainy as the next one." 

Roxy colored consciously under this extraordinary 
bit of praise, — she had not been used to kindly com- 
ments of that sort, and there is no denying the fact, 
that the taste they left in her mouth was an uncom- 
monly pleasant one. 

“ And now,” counselled Mrs. Sol, “what we’ve got 
to do, is to say to folks that want to know about yer 
plans, that I’m goin’ to take you with me on this next 
vyge f’r company. That’s true enough, and if I was 
you, I wouldn’t tell anybody, not even Prue, what 
you’re goin’ to Washinton for. It’s a good deal harder 
if you have to sneak out the back way, when you’ve 
come in the front door with a blare of trumpets an’ 
blowin’ of tin horns, callin’ everybody’s attention to 


prue’s new bonnet. 


121 


what you’re after. Besides, ’twould be a pity to let 
the children get their hopes set too high, and then be 
disappointed.” 

So Roxy took her advice, and in all her preparations 
for the anticipated voyage, not a word or hint did she 
give as to the real object of her journey. 

Removed from Plumy’s influence, Prue was herself 
again, loving, tender, and unselfish as of old, yet there 
was an undefinable something, a maturity of thought 
and speech, that showed only too clearly to the eyes 
made keen by love, that her maidenly feet were already 
set in those untried paths, wherein all of her sex must 
walk, — it may be in calm, sweet meadows, beside the 
still waters of domestic love and peace, or among the 
cruel rocks of disappointment and vain regrets, — God 
alone wotteth which it may be, for human love, un- 
prophetic, can only pray, and hope, and trust that all 
may be well with its heart’s idol. 

By careful husbandry Roxy’s winter’s wage would 
not only pay her board for a few weeks at Mrs. Me- 
Greggor’s, but would leave a sufficient amount to pro- 
vide for her household during her absence, while the 
Deacon had kindly consented to let Sewell spend his 
nights in his own home, thus removing any fear of 
loneliness on the part of his homekeeping sister. 

Only a week or two before the time set for her jour- 
ney, Roxy found it necessary to enter her cousin’s 
door for the first time since her final protest against 
the elder woman’s selfish greed, and unjust appropri- 
ation of what was really the property of another. 


122 


QUEENSHITHE. 


Granny nad died, unexpectedly at the last, and as 
relatives, the Raes were bound by the funeral etiquette 
of the day, to present themselves among the mourners 
who assembled to listen to the required panegyric 
over the dead, before consigning the poor, worn 
out, old shell to the impartial bosom of its mother 
earth. It was hard to forego her natural resentment 
even at such a time, and yet Roxy’s tender heart could 
not restrain its sympathy at sight of Dorindy’s tear 
swollen eyes, as she tenderly smoothed back the thin, 
white hair from the cold forehead, and bending down, 
laid a daughter’s kiss upon the still, pale lips, that 
were as marble to the unwonted caress. 

They chanced to be standing alone together in the 
inner room which had been appropriated to the dead, 
and the girl was startled, almost terrified as, looking 
appealingly into her face, her companion asked, in a 
harsh whisper: 

“ Roxy, do jy{?u know where Peg is ? ” 

The girl shook her head. She could not trust her- 
self to speak, for the solemn presence in which they 
stood, the suddenness of the question, and more than 
all, the wild light in the questioner’s eyes, struck her 
dumb for the moment, with a chill dread of some un- 
seen horror, for which she dared not find a name. 
The widow laid a hand upon her arm, cold as the 
hand of the dead, while she whispered shudderingly: 

“ They say that — that she appeared to you.” 

Roxy tried to rally her scattered senses, enough to 
make a sensible reply to this strange observation: 


prue’s new bonnet. 


123 


‘ ‘ She — she, that is, I thought I saw her the night 
she went away, but I’ve thought since then, that, 
maybe, I dreampt it, after all. ’ ’ 

“ No, you didn’t.” 

And there was such bitter anguish in the tone that, 
forgetting all her own wrongs, the girl could not but 
try to comfort the almost distracted woman : 

“There, there, Dorindy! don't speak like that. 
Somehow, I don’t feel as if the child was dead, — I 
7iever have. ’ ’ 

The widow gave her a look that, to her dying day 
she never forgot, and as the neighbors came tiptoeing 
in, one after another, to look in breathless awe upon 
the poor clay, that, for once, lay all unconscious of 
their presence, the pale woman, in her somber weeds, 
reseated herself in the chief mourner’s place, by the 
coffin’s head, while Roxy, too bewildered and shocked 
to listen understanding^ to the service, sat, turning the 
subject over and over in her mind, trying in vain to 
find the reason for her kinswoman’s evident terror and 
apprehension. 

During those first few days at the Captain’s house, 
Plumy Partridge, evidently thinking the subject a con- 
genial one to those whom Mrs. Jeff had so cruelly 
wronged, had insisted upon telling the story of her 
suspicions, in regard to the disappearance of the bound 
girl, to which Roxy had replied with a contemptuous 
sharpness that checked all farther talk upon the subject 
in her presence. But now, — what could be the mean- 
ing of the woman’s strange agitation, and her certainty 


124 


QUEENSHITHE. 


that Peg was really dead ? Was it possible that all 
this gossip had its foundations laid in fact ? 

She looked at the solitary, black robed figure, shed- 
ding tears of unaffected sorrow over the old mother, 
who had been for years at once a care and a confident, 
and she could not bring herself to believe that the lost 
child’s death lay at her door. And yet, — recalling all 
the stories of her cruel tyranny, her meanness and 
cupidity, and, worst of all, that unbridled temper, 
which, when fairly aroused, was that of a madwoman, 
her heart sank within her, she could not explain, and 
she dared not surmise. 


CHAPTER Vm. 


MORE SURPRISES THAN ONE. 

T the beginning of the present century Washing- 



/A ton was a city only in name, with scattered, un- 
finished buildings rising here and there above the scrub 
oaks and alders, while the uncleared forest in the 
background boasted now and then a windowless hut, 
where some far-sighted squatter had made himself a 
dwelling place, consoling himself for present privations 
by anticipations of the good time coming, when every 
half acre of this ‘ ‘ city of magnificent distances ’ ’ would 
be a fortune to its owner. 

The President’s house and the Capital were still only 
half finished, and along the broad avenues, — laid out 
in imitation of those of Paris and Versailles — rows of 
shops, unpretentious, low wooden structures, were 
filled with a queer combination of dry and “wet” 
goods, suited to the wants of their motley crowd of 
customers, which consisted largely of the workmen 
employed in great numbers upon the building and 
ornamentation of the new Capital of the young and 
lusty republic. 

It was a rough, crude, and at the time far from 
beautiful picture, but to Roxy, fresh from the quiet 
and seclusion of that little out of the way hamlet, the 


126 


QUEENSHITHE. 


hurry and bustle, the clang of the workman’s hammer, 
the cry of the teamsters to their horses, and the long 
rows of stately skeletons that, once clothed upon with 
substantial wood and stone, would become the homes 
of the great and honored of the land, gave something 
of metropolitan splendor and dignity to the scene, that 
even the inconvenience of walking ankle deep in mud 
a good part of the way had no power to dissipate. 

For economy’s sake the twain had walked up from 
the wharf where the Sally Barden was moored, and 
Mrs. Sol was in her element, pointing out the various 
objects of interest to her unsophisticated friend. 

‘ ‘ Do you see off across there, that building that 
shines so when the sun strikes it? well, that’s the 
President’s house. ’Taint all finished yet, but folks 
say, that’s been inside of it, that it’s a sight to see, 
with its big rooms, and great long entries, (corryders 
they call ’em here,) and furnitoor fit f ’r a queen. I’ve 
heard say, too, that their dinner-table was as fine as 
that that King George himself eats off of, — chiny that 
you can see through, and silver and gold dishes, — 
why, they do say that one set alone cost five hundred 
dollars. An awful pile o’ money to spend on some- 
thin’ to eat out of, but I s’ pose if the President can 
afford it, ’taint no business of ourn.” 

The girl shaded her eyes with one ungloved hand, 
and looked long and longingly at the stately edifice 
that, in the distance, seemed a veritable “ Palace Beau- 
tiful ’ ’ to her simple vision. 

“Yes, I see it,” and she drew a breath of mingled 


PRUE S NEW BONNET. 


127 


awe and delight. “ I wonder if people really live, and 
sleep, and do their cooking and washing there, just as 
they do in common houses ? ’ ’ 

Mrs. Sol tossed her comely head, and laughed with 
a little air of good natured superiority: 

“ Oh, you little goose! Of course they do. Folks 
have got to live if they’re ever so high and mighty. 
But the President’s folks have plenty o’ niggers to do 
the heft o’ the work, and folks say, (I don’t know how 
true ’tis,) that Mis Randolph, the President’s daughter, 
keeps a black girl on purpose to tend out on ’er, all 
the time, — to dress and undress her, to comb her hair, 
and hand her any little thing she may happen to want. 
Most likely though she got into them shifless ways 
while she was away to school in a French convent. 
That’s the only thing I ever had agin President Jeffer- 
son, his sendin’ his daughter to be trained by catholics. 
It was an unwise thing for him to do, turn it which 
way you will, and it give the Feds a handle against 
’im at election time, but I guess it didn’t do ’er no 
great harm, f’r everybody speaks well of ’er here.” 

Her companion made no reply to this bit of Wash- 
ington gossip. She was looking just then with curious 
eyes at the unfamiliar Lombardy poplars, queer, trim 
trees, yet ornamefital according to the standard of 
taste in those days, and which had been procured by 
the effbrts of President Jefferson himself, at consider- 
able cost and no little trouble. 

“What queer trees! ” she remarked, but Mrs. Sol’s 
thoughts were elsewhere. 


128 


QUEENSHITHE. 


‘ ‘ Do you see that third house in the row ? ’ ’ and she 
pointed to one of a long line of wooden shops that 
bordered a portion of what was even then dignified 
with the name of “ Pennsylvania Avenue.” “ That’s 
Mis McGreggor’s shop, and she keeps house overhead. 
The Cap’n and I always put up there while he’s un- 
loadin’, and a sweeter, cleaner, wholesomer berth I 
never’ 11 ask for, in this world, Mis McGreggor’s a 
clever creatur as ever trod shoe leather, and all the 
top-knots here trade with ’er, so’t you’ll find she’s a 
friend worth havin’ , if she only takes a shine to ye. 
I, — well, well, I do d’clare if that aint her now, big as 
life, lookin’ out o’ her shop door! ” 

And with her face all aglow with smiles of greeting, 
the good dame hurried down the street, while Roxy, 
following close in her wake, felt her cheeks flush bash- 
fully under the sharp but by no means unfriendly look 
with which the Scotchwoman regarded her, even while 
responding to Mrs. Sol’s hearty greeting: 

“ Gude guide us! But it’s nae yer ainsel, Meestress 
Barden ? Weel, weel, but this is a sicht gude for sair 
een. An this lassie, — ” taking in at one comprehen- 
sive glance the whole outward bearing of the stranger, 
from her meekly bonneted head down to the tips of 
her tidy calfskin shoes, ‘ ‘ she’ s no bairn o’ yours, I tak 
it?” 

Mrs. Sol laughed good naturedly, although the 
color deepened a little upon her matronly cheek. 

“ Oh law, no! I aint got a chick nor a child in the 
world , — never had. This is one o’ my neighbors, 


prue’s new bonnet. 


129 


come to Washinton on business, and I brought ’er up 
here, thinkin’ you might accommodate her with a bed 
and bite, for a couple o’ weeks or so. ’ ’ 

Mrs. McGreggor’s smile of friendly recognition 
faded, and a look of keen calculation settled down 
upon her face, bringing out all the queer little lines 
and wrinkles that, somehow, bore a strange likeness 
to the straggling figures upon her own carefully kept 
ledger: 

“ Weel, as to that, I hae a room, tidy an’ sweet as 
a rose garden, wi an ootlook frae its ane window wad 
wile a body’s vera een frae her heid wi gowpen at it. 
But,” slowly shaking her head, till the voluminous cap 
border flapped and bristled aggressively, “it’s nae to 
be rentit by ony light minded gallant or flauntin hiz- 
zie that may have the siller to spare for it. Nae, nae,” 
as Mrs. Sol tried to interpose with a half indignant 
defence of her protege, “I’m nae dootin the lassie 
hersel, — she' s nae light body, as ane may ken frae her 
honest face, but ye ken I’m a lone woman, wi nae- 
body to be beholden to, and if I want a bit extra for 
the genteelity o’ the room, it’s nae yersel as will cowp 
an’ blether at twa an saxpence for the lodgin, an four 
shillins tippence for the feed. ’ ’ 

As this was really a moderate price, Roxy was only 
too glad to close with the good woman’s offer, and at 
her invitation, to follow her through the shop, and up 
the dark, narrow flight of stairs that led to the rooms 
above, where the simple housekeeping arrangements 
were carried on with an order and neatness that lent 


130 


QUEENSHITHE. 


an air of quiet gentility to the plainly furnished rooms, 
and rendered superfluous, according to Roxy’s simple 
country notions, the parting assurance of their smiling 
mistress. 

“ Mak yeself at hame noo, and I’ll send my bit 
lassie in a giff, wi fair water and towels, and anything 
else ye may speir for. Dinna mind callin’ for any- 
thing ye may lack,” she added, looking back from 
the threshold, “for I aye hold it my beesness to see 
that my lodgers are satisfied sae far as I can mak 
them sae.” 

She closed the door gently behind her, but the girl 
could hear her voice in tones of pleased surprise as 
she expressed her thanks for a small jar of cider- 
apple sauce, (a gift that Mrs. Sol had had much ado 
to keep intact through the voyage, ) and had brought 
ashore in her own hands, on purpose to conciliate her 
thrifty landlady. 

“ I thought you*d like to try it,” she said, “ seein’ 
you can’ t know much about our real American dishes, 
down here in this out o’ the way part o’ the country. ’ ’ 

An indistinct murmur of surprise and gratification 
showed that the gift was most graciously received. 

‘ ‘ Indeed, and I tak it kindly, yer remembrance of 
a puir body so far awa, and as for the bit lassie in the 
ben beyont she’ll ” — 

Roxy lost the concluding words, nor did she con- 
nect them with the summons that, a minute later, 
sounded in some far-away corner of the modest domi- 
cile, where the landlady was evidently summoning the 


prue’s new bonnet. 


I3I 

bit lassie ” to attend to the wants of her new lodger. 
It was the first time in all her life that the girl had 
been ten miles away from her native village, and 
naturally everything was new and wonderful to her 
unaccustomed eyes. The bed with its gay patchwork 
quilt, and curtains of smart chintz upon which gro- 
tesque figures of dragons and griffins writhed and 
gnashed their teeth, in most bewildering confusion, 
occupied a large part of the room, while the small 
washstand and oval hanging glass in its antique frame, 
seemed to her the very embodiment of metropolitan 
grace and fitness. 

Unused to, she never thought to miss the carpet, 
whose comfortable substitute was any number of 
homemade rugs; square, oblong, oval and round, 
drawn, braided, or woven in such a variety of intricate 
and gorgeous designs, that Roxy’s housewifely eyes 
were fairly dazzled with their rude splendor. Indeed, 
she could hardly wait to divest herself of outward 
wraps, before she was down on her knees before one 
of the largest, studying with all the zeal of an adept 
in the rug-making art, the ingenious pattern. 

“The middle of that rose yarn^ I know,” she 
murmured with half-suppressed eagerness, “and the 
outside of the buds is green cloth sewed on. I’m sure 
— yes. I’m sure of it, and — Come in,” as a low knock 
sounded upon the door, and half vexed at the un- 
timely interruption, the girl rose to her feet and 
glanced indifferently at the intruder. 

It was only a slender slip of a girl, in a neat, dark 


132 


QUEENSHITHE. 


gown, her black hair smoothly braided and fastened 
with a gay plaided ribbon, and her brown cheeks 
glowing with health and happiness as half-shyly, yet 
with the eagerness of a delighted child, she stepped 
lightly into the room, set down her water-pitcher, 
straightened herself, and looked long and lovingly 
into Roxy’s astonished face. 

“What? No — why, it can’/ be! Peggy, child, it 
zs thyself, in very truth. ’ ’ 

And with outstretched arms, and eyes glistening 
through happy tears, the excited girl rushed tumult- 
uously for her old pet, who, on her part, had dropped 
upon her knees, and stretching out both trembling 
hands, with the palms outward, cried warningly: 

“No, no, Roxy! Don’t kiss me, don’t touch me 
even, till I’ve told you all about it. I didn’t mean to 
be a thief,” and the hot blood burned in her dusky 
cheek as she uttered the shameful word in a half- 
choked whisper, ‘ ‘ and above all, to steal from you^ 
the only friend I had in the whole world. ’ ’ 

“Of course you didn’t” interrupted her listner 
with pitying tenderness, ‘ ‘ I never thought for a 
minute that you meant to do me an ill turn. It was 
Dorindy ” — 

“Yes, ’twas her — the mean old snake-in-the-grass!” 
and Peg went on, unmindful of Roxy’s gentle protest, 
to tell the story of her crafty mistress’ plot to get at 
the secret of the braid: 

‘ ‘ When she come home from your house that 
mornin’, she says to me: ‘Peg, the Rae’s are just 


prue’s new bonnet. 


133 


overrun with work, and I’ve agreed to lend you to 
’em for a week or so. Now I do hope that you won’t 
go an’ disgrace me with any o’ yer slack ways, f’r 
Roxy’s as neat as a pin, and expects everybody about 
’er to be.’ 

Of course I was all high f’r goin’, so I tore round, 
and did up my one tow an’ linen gown, and darned 
the holes in the stockins you give me the first o’ the 
winter before, and all the time the widder was that 
smooth an’ sweet that I might a’ mistrusted the cat 
under the meal if I hadn’t been so taken up with the 
notion o’ goin’ to your house f’r a whole week, and 
maybe more. But when I’d fairly got outside the 
door, she called me back into the entry, and says she, 
kind o’ careless as if ’twas an afterthought: ‘Look 
here, Peg, you’re a grand good hand to pick up things, 
if you’re only a mind to, now dpn’t you s’ pose that by 
keepin’ an eye on Roxy, you could see how she does 
that new braid o’ hern ? I don’ t want you to ask her 
to learn it to you, because that ’d be too much trouble 
to her, but if you could get the hang of it by watchin’ 
her do it, and show me how, I could braid both of us 
new bunnits this summer. ’ 

‘ A new bunnit!’ Why I hadn’t had nothin’ but an 
old sunbunnit f’r my head f’r the last four summers, 
and I was ready to do most anything for the sake of 
havin’ something like other girls for once in my life. 

But all at once it come acrost me that I’d heard say 
you didn’t want anybody to get holt of the secret of 
that braid, and I says right out, swallowin’ the big 


134 


QUEENSHITHE. 


lump in my throat, (for I did want that new bunnit 
awful . ) — 

‘ That wouldn’ t be the fair thing by Roxy, to learn 
you how to do the braid unbeknownst to her, and I 
couldn’ t bring myself to do it nohow. ’ 

Land, if she didn’t blaze! Called me an ungrateful 
huzzy, and some other names that aint so pretty as 
that, till I was mortal scart for fear she wouldn’t let 
me come over to your house after all. But after a 
spell she cooled down a little, and at last, says she, 
as if she’d done with the whole thing, and didn’t 
want no more talk about it: 

‘Well, g’long with ye then, f’r an obstinate, on- 
grateful pig! And if you do learn to do the braid I 
shan’t never ask you to show me how it’s done. You 
can eat my bread, and share my roof, and cheat me 
out of my rightful dues into the bargain, (for 1 s’ pose 
you know that, bein’ bound to me by the town till 
you’re eighteen, what you know how to do belongs to 
me jest as much as what you do do,) and I’ve got to 
stand it, seein’ I aint got the heart to turn you out 
o’ doors.’ 

I felt pretty womblecropt, f’r I never had looked at 
it in that light before, and I made up my mind that I 
wouldn’ t learn to do the braid, and then I shouldn’ t 
be to blame for not passin’ it over to the widder.” 

Roxy’s eyes had been growing bigger and bigger in 
her astonishment at such an unheard of exposition of 
the relations between a town’s apprentice and her 
mistress. 


prue’s new bonnet. 


135 


“Why, at that rate, she wouldn’t allow that yer 
soul was yer own till after you was eighteen, I s’ pose?” 

Peg smiled rather dolefully: 

“ I guess she don’t believe that got any soul,” 
she said, with a grimace whose significance her com- 
panion well understood, for hadn’t she herself heard 
the widow declare more than once that it was no more 
use for the child to go to meeting on Sundays than 
for a tame squirrel or woodchuck to be taught the 
catechism ? It was a convenient doctrine, for it saved 
buying Peg decent clothes, while it secured an at- 
tendant for granny while she was herself absent at the 
services which she so seldom absented herself from. 
But it was no time then to re-open these old wounds, 
and Peg went on to explain that it was her eager de- 
sire to be of use to her friend that overbore her reso- 
lution not to learn the secret of the new braid, and 
laid the foundation of all their future troubles. 

‘ ‘ It seemed so good to be able to help you in a 
way that nobody else could, and I made up my mind 
not to let Mis Jeff mistrust that I had learned it, even 
if I had to lie out of it. But as it happened, she 
never asked me a word about it, and I was beginning 
to feel real easy and comfortable in my mind, when all 
at once she started up and begun to talk big about a 
new millinery shop that she was goin’ to open, and 
plan what she’d have on her sign. Then I found that 
somehow she’d got holt o’ the way that braid was 
made, and the evenin’ you came there and had that 
talk with her, I was in the kitchen and heard every 


QUEENSHITHE. 


13^ 

word, and after you was gone I jest went for ’er, and 
asked her what she meant by tellin’ you such a lie 
about me, when she knew that I never’ d showed her 
a thing about the braid ? 

She jest threw herself back in her chair, and oh 
how she laughed! (it makes every drop of blood in 
my body boil now when I think of it.) 

‘ You know, I s’ pose, that you walk in your sleep? * 
says she. 

My heart sunk down just like lead at that, and I 
could hardly get my voice to ask what she meant, for 
I knew in a minute what she’d been up to, for many’s 
the time she’s kep me to work half the night, and I 
not knowin’ a thing about it till she told me in the 
mornin’ . 

‘ Only this ’ says she, ‘ that you showed me how to 
do that braid in yer sleep. ’ 

Oh Roxy! it did seem as if my heart would break. 
To think that /shou’d a’ been the one to bring all 
that trouble on you; just about drove me crazy, and I 
thought at first I’d go and drown myself, so’t I 
never’ d have to look you in the face again. But the 
next minute I thought better on’t, and all at once it 
come acrost me somethin that Mis Cap’n Sol had told 
me when she first got home from her last vyge, about 
a nice old Scotch woman that she lodged with in 
Washington, wantin’ a girl to help about the house, 
and tend in her shop. She said she’d ruther have 
one that hadn’t no home nor friends, ’cause she’d be 
better contented, so thinks I, ‘I’m the one to suit ’er 


prue’s new bonnet. 


^37 


there,’ so I didn’t stop to think it over, but dipt right 
acrost to the Cap’n’s, and asked ’em if they’d take 
me with ’em, and speak a good word f’r me with this 
Mis McGreggor? I didn’t let on about the braid, but 
they knew enough of what I had to put up with to 
feel a pity for me, and Cap’n Sol spoke right up, and 
says he: 

‘Take ye with us? Of course we will, and we’ll 
cover yer tracks so well that that old Jezebel won’t 
git wind o’ yer whereabouts, and put in a claim for 
yer services, on the ground o’ yer bein bound to ’er 
by the town.' 

We sailed early the next momin’ before anybody 
was awake, and when we got here. Mis McGregor 
took me right in, and she’s just as good and kind to 
me as if I was her own flesh and blood. 

That’s all — and now Roxy, can you forgive me, 
and not lay it up against me that I was really at the 
bottom of all yer troubles, little as I meant to be ? ” 

The tears were streaming down Roxy’s cheeks, and 
as she hugged the girl close to her heart, she found it 
no easy thing to give speech to the emotions that 
filled that heart almost to overflowing. 

“Poor, dear little Peg! I never held thee respon- 
sible, even before I found out how Dorindy got the 
secret from thee, but I’m glad to hear the story from 
thy own lips.” 

And Peg, folded in that warm, loving embrace, felt 
that, henceforth, life had for her no more regretful 
memories to mar the sunshine of the present, or cast a 


138 


QUEENSHITHE. 


cloud upon the future, — Roxy’s generous soul had 
cancelled the debt once and forever. 

It was hard at first to realize that the bright faced, 
tidily clad serving maid of good Mrs. McGreggor was 
the same with the forlorn, half starved little waif upon 
whom the “widder Jeff” had vented all the ill humor 
and spite of her selfish nature, but when Roxy, in 
retailing the home news, touched upon the suspicions 
from which the widow was just now suffering, Peg was 
her old self again, — fierce and revengeful as became 
her reputed ancestry. 

“Good! I hope they won’t never find out that I 
aint dead, and that they’ll mistrust ’er all her life long 
of makin’ away with me. Won’t she squirm though, 
if they church maul ’er on account of it? I’d like to 
be a mouse in the wall jest then, and hear Deacon 
Skinner say, in that sniffle o’ his, ‘ Owin’ to suspected 
disorderly conduct, the widder Hackett is dropped 
from this communion,’ — wouldn’t that be fun alive? ’’ 

And there was something in her laugh that made 
the gender nature of her companion recoil with a thrill 
of actual pain. 

“Oh Peg! you wouldn’t want her disgraced like 
that for a crime that she’s really innocent of ? ’’ 

“Wouldn’t I though!’’ retorted the girl sharply. 
“She’s guilty of enough, for if she didn’t make out 
to starve and beat me to death, she come mighty near 
it sometimes.” 

But Roxy remembered the scene at granny’s funeral, 
and her heart grew pitiful within her as she thought of 


prue’s new bonnet. 


139 


the wretched, haggard face of the solitary woman, and 
she could not refrain from making another appeal for 
the girl’s forgiveness, useless though she felt it to be. 

“She’s a dretful unhappy woman, Dorindy is, — I 
know, from something she said to me at granny’s 
funeral, that she thinks you’ve made way with your- 
self, and that she feels that she is responsible for it. If 
you could have seen her face then, and heard her voice 
when she asked me if I knew where you was, you’d 
have pitied her, — you couldn’t have helped it.” 

“Yes I could,” declared Peg stubbornly. “ I jest 
hate ’ er, not so much for the way she treated me^ as 
the mean trick she played on you. But won’t she rare 
when you go back with that patent in yer pocket, and 
say to her, ‘ Here you old thief ! hand over all them 
straws, or pay me a good, round sum f’r the right to 
make ’em.’ ” 

She was in such high glee over the prospect of Mrs. 
Jeff’s discomfiture, that, for the time, she seemed to 
forget the other side of the two edged sword suspended 
over the widow’s devoted head, and when she again 
referred to it, there was something of the old, tricksey 
humor in the relish with which she described how 
cleverly she had outwitted her hard taskmistress, at 
the very last. 

“ I thought I’d make ’er think that I’d jumped into 
the river, so’t she wouldn’t mistrust where I’d gone, 
and this is the way I contrived it: 

‘ ‘ In the first place, I drew with a bit of charcoal on 
a piece of white birch bark, a picture of an injin devil, 


140 


QXJEENSHITHE. 


(she used to call me that when she was mad,) jumpin^ 
into the water. I pinned that on to the quilt on 
granny’s bed, so’t in the mornin’ when she brought 
in the old woman’s breakfast, she’d be sure to find it. 
Then to’ar’d^ mornin’, when all was still, I slipt out o’ 
the house, and run down the path to the shore, drop- 
pin’ an apron o’ mine on the way, and leavin’ the 
prints of my feet of course in the soft mud. I knew 
that jest as quick as she found that picture, she’d start 
for the shore by the path through the garden, and in 
that way, she’d be sure to find the signs of my havin’ 
been there before ’er, and take it for granted that I’d 
drownded myself.” 

‘ ‘ But if you wanted to make Dorindy think that 
you’d gone and drownded yerself, why didn’t you 
leave a note instead of a picture? ” 

Peg shook her head cunningly: 

“ Hadn’t no paper, nor pen and ink, — ^and besides, 
don’t you see, ’twould a’ been a lie if I’d writ any- 
thing, but the picture jest hinted, and I wa’ant to blame 
for the way she might happen to take it, was I ? ' ’ 

“ Seems to me, ’ returned honest Roxy, “that one 
was just as much an intended lie as the other would a’ 
been. F’r my part, I’d as lives eat the devil as drink 
his broth.” 

Peg smiled, a very superior smile. It was evident 
that her simple minded friend was, by no means, up 
to the advanced ideas regarding the moral questions of 
her day and generation, that the shrewder damsel had 
long since worked out, to her own satisfaction, at leapt. 


prue’s new bonnet. 


I4I 

“No it wasn’t, — it was only a ‘pardonable decep- 
tion.’ “ 

Roxy looked curious, for those big words sounded 
suspiciously foreign upon Peg’s Yankee bred tongue, 
— where could she have caught them ? 

The girl evidently suspected the thought, for she 
went on, nothing loth, to enlighten her: 

“You see. I’ve learned that much from the news- 
paper that Mis McGreggor takes. When the party 
that they’re boostin’ up, takes a sly, underhand way to 
bring about somethin’ f ’r the good o’ the country, (or 
the party, — it’s all one,) and ’tother party finds it out, 
and begins to rare an’ tear at ’em for cheats an liars, 
why all they’ve got to do is to turn right round and 
knock ’em stiff with somethin’ about ‘pardonable de- 
ceptions,* and the ‘ wisdom of silence.* It’s an awful 
slick way of gettin’ out of a scrape, and it sounds real 
good and fine, besides.’* 

Roxy stared aghast. What had come over the girl, 
with her newspaper readings, and her irreverent talk 
about the great political parties, as if they were so 
many neighbors’ boys, playing and squabbling over a 
game of “pitch-toss?’’ Her brain whirled at this 
unheard of evolution of the wide awake Peg, and it 
was with a feeling of uncertainty new to her brave, 
energetic nature, that she approached Mrs. Sol upon 
the matter naturally uppermost in her own mind, and 
which had nerved her to take this long, and to her, 
perilous journey to the very seat of the land’s law. 

Here too she found a surprise awaiting her in the 


142 


QUEENSHITHE. 


unlooked for reluctance of her friend to take upon her- 
self the role of chaperon in a visit to the Patent Office. 

“ You’ll have to wait till the Cap’n can take a day 
off to go with you,” she declared, in reply to the girl’s 
urgent request that the matter might be attended to as 
soon as possible. ‘ ‘ Men understand about these things, 
and they have a sort of independent way with ’ em that 
most generally carries the day. F’r my part, I 
shouldn’t know no more’n a hen what to say after I’d 
got there.” 

This from the woman who, in the privacy of her 
own home, had boasted so bravely of her intimacy 
with these great ones of the earth. It was all very 
well among the unsophisticated townsfolk of little 
Bestport to talk large of her Washington acquaint- 
ances, and metaphorically, to 

Hail them Tom or Jack.” 

but when it really came to actual contact with these 
great makers of our nation’s history, the good dame’s 
courage fairly oozed out at her finger’s ends, leaving 
her only the plain, unassuming wife of an obscure 
Yankee skipper, of whose existence even not a score 
of souls in the whole city either knew or cared. 

Nothing wilts the cockscomb of vulgar self-assertion 
in the bonnet of the ordinary man or woman as does 
actual contact with the really great. And when we 
hear an obscure individual speaking with unbecoming 
familiarity of certain great men, calling them by 
diminutives of their Christian names, perhaps, and 
referring to certain occasions where circumstances 


prue’s new bonnet. 


43 


placed them for the time being, upon a common level, 
instead of fancying him hand and glove with this 
famous “Tom” or “Jim,” it is pretty safe to con- 
clude that if brought into close relations with these 
men, none would realize his insignificance more than 
he, or bow more abjectly to the superior personality or 
position of those whom he affects, at a distance, to 
regard as his pothouse cronies. 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE FIRST GENTLEMAN IN THE LAND. 

what a beau-ti-ful carriage! And see that 
gentleman riding alongside of it, — how 
straight and grand he carries himself, jest as if the 
horse and he was one critter. There — ^why, they’re 
stoppin’ here as true’s you’re alive, and the nigger 
man is helpin’ the prettiest little girl out o’ the ker- 
ridge. Who can they be ? ” 

Roxy had for the last few days been living in such a 
whirl of excitement; that all her little staidnesses had 
been forgotten for the time, and her tongue ran as 
glibly as Peg’s own. 

While waiting Captain Sol’s convenience to accom- 
pany her to the Patent Office, our little country 
maiden had found an unwonted excitement in visiting 
the shop beneath her lodgings, where, cozily sitting 
behind the high counter, she could watch passers-by 
from the near show window, or study unnoticed the 
customers, of which the tidy Scotch woman had no 
lack. 

On this special morning, the mistress herself being 
out, Peg occupied the post of honor behind the tall 
desk, and it was to her that Roxy’s eager question 
was directed. 


prue’s new bonnet. 


145 


She looked up quickly from the long line of figures 
over which she was poring, and with a glance through 
the window at the fine turn-out, jumped down from 
her stool, and hastily smoothing out her fresh white 
apron, hurried forward just in time to return modestly 
the polite salutation of the little Miss who came trip- 
ping into the shop, — the dusky footman holding the 
door open for her with an air of profound reverence, 
her cheeks rosy with the fresh morning air, and a 
crop of short chestnut curls framing in the sweet child- 
ish face, from whose frank blue eyes looked out an 
innocent friendliness that had in it not a trace of 
condescension or conceit. 

“ Good morning! ” and she smiled pleasantly, as if 
unconscious of Peg's blushing embarrassment. 

‘ ‘ I wish to purchase a new bonnet for my Madem- 
oiselle Polie.” 

And from under her pretty scarlet cloak she drew, 
with a great display of motherly solicitude, a big wax 
doll, attired in the latest Parisian fashion, but with 
only a bit of spangled gauze covering her flaxen 
curls, 

“ I named her for my aunt Polly,” explained the 
little mother, pretending to hush her baby, and giving 
a mischievous look out of the corner of her eye at the 
admiring faces of the girls who, in their wonder and 
delight, had pressed nearer to see this rare and won- 
derful beauty from over the seas. 

“ But she is French, you see, so I have to call her 
what the little girls in the French convent where 


146 


QUEENSHITHE. 


auntie went to school, used to call her. She wore a. 
turban with a pink plume in it when she came here, 
but I’m afraid that, in this cold climate, she’ll catch 
the consumption if she don’t have something warmer 
for her head.” 

She glanced with a pretty air of appeal from one to 
the other, and Peg’s countenance fell, — she would 
have been the happiest girl in Washington at that 
moment, if she could have furnished the bit of doll’s^ 
finery that the little lady craved: 

“I’m dretfully sorry, but, — I’m afraid — ” she 
began, when Roxy interrupted her with glowing 
cheeks, and the eager 

“ Hold on a minute! ” 

And darting up the stairway that led to her own 
room, she quickly reappeared, balancing upon one 
finger in proud triumph, the daintiest and most dimin- 
utive of bonnets, fashioned from the Martha Jefferson 
braid, and worthy to deck the brow of Titania herself,, 
should the fairy queen take a notion to indulge in a 
carriage drive. 

‘ ‘ Here, ” and with practiced fingers she fitted it to 
the waxen head, setting it well forward, after the 
fashion of the day, and pulling out a curl here and 
there, in unconscious imitation of its pretty mistress’ 
own head gear. 

“There — it fits like a mitten.” And the little 
stranger joyfully echoed the sentiment: 

‘ ‘ It might have been made for her. Oh what fun 
I’ll have trimming it! ” 


prue’s new bonnet. 


147 


Then suddenly recollecting herself, she drew a tiny 
silk purse from her satchel, with the question: 

‘ ‘ What shall I pay you for it ? ” 

“ Nothing. Miss. You’re moreen welcome to it.” 

The little lady colored, and glanced uncertainly 
towards the door, where the tall, white-haired gentle- 
man who had so kindled Roxy’s enthusiasm, having 
entered unnoticed in the excitement, now stood, 
watching the scene, with a kindly yet amused smile 
upon his handsome face. 

“But you must let me pay you,” persisted the 
child. ” Didn’t you make it to sell ? ” 

Roxy shook her head. 

“No,” she said, coloring a little under the gentie- 
man’s curious eyes. “It is a model for a kind of 
straw braid that I came here to get a patent for. I 
made two of them to bring with me, to show the 
Patent Office folks, and I can spare this one as well as 
not , — do let me give it to you.” 

The gentleman now came leisurely forward, and the 
little maid held it out for his inspection: 

‘ ‘ See, grandpapa, ’ ’ dropping her voice confiden- 
tially, ‘ ‘ Did you ever see anything so perfectly lovely 
as this — ” 

“ Martha Jefferson braid,” appended Peg shrewdly. 

The gentleman gravely examined the really beauti- 
ful and ingenious work: 

“And you have come to Washington to get a pat- 
ent on it? ” he asked. 

Something in the reassuring glance of those calm, 


148 


QUEENSHITHE. 


clear eyes won the girl’s rarely given confidence, and 
she replied, with a little bashful hesitation: 

Yes sir, I have come all the way from my home 
in Maine on purpose to get a patent that will keep my 
neighbors from stealing the secret of it, and crowding 
me out of the business entirely. I was a good while 
thinking it out, and it seems only fair that, if there is 
any money in it, I should be the one to have the profit 
of it.” 

He smiled. 

"Then you’ll miss the fate of inventors generally, 
but—” 

Here his little granddaughter, who had been listen- 
ing with intelligent interest to the girl’s words, plucked 
him by the sleeve, and standing on tiptoe, whispered 
a few words in his ear. 

"Well, well,” and he nodded good naturedly, as he 
gathered the child’s hand in his own with a touch that 
was in itself a caress. “ You’re a brave girl to venture 
in such untried paths, with so little to encourage you, 
but we’ll see what can be done for you.” 

He held out his hand, which Roxy took with an 
unwonted shyness, although she could scarce forbear 
her smiles at sight of the myterious nods and grimaces 
whereby the little lady expressed her own satisfaction, 
and sought to reassure the timid stranger. 

As the door closed upon them. Peg dropped into the 
nearest chair, and laughed and cried by turns, like a 
crazy creature. 

"Why, Peg, child, — what is the matter? ” pleaded 


prue’s new bonnet. 


149 


her friend, half frightened at such unaccountable be- 
haviour. 

But Peg caught her about the waist, with a hysteri- 
cal laugh: 

“You’ll get your patent, stire^ now, — and no mis- 
take.’’ 

Roxy stared uncomprehendingly: 

“How? Why?’’ 

Peg drew herself up with a little air of triumph: 

“Why, that was President Jefferson, his own self, 
and his little granddaughter Lucy Randolph, (her 
mother is the Marthy Jefferson that you named your 
braid for).’’ 

For a moment, Roxy stood, too bewildered to speak, 
then tears of heartfelt gratitude sprang to her eyes, 
and in a voice scarce above a whisper, yet instinct with 
fresh hope and courage, she murmured gratefully: 

“ It must a’ been God himself that sent that little 
girl here this mornin’, after a bunnit for her doll.’’ 

And who shall say that it was not ? 

Two days later, the whole McGreggor household 
was thrown into a fever of excitement over an invitation 
received by Roxy, from the President’s granddaughter, 
to dine with her that evening at the White House. 
The tall colored footman had brought the prettily 
worded note, written by the young lady herself, with 
“mamma’s compliments,’’ and a polite intimation that 
the carriage would be sent for her at an early hour, 
that the children of the household might have the 
pleasure of meeting her before their own early bed- 
time came. 


150 


QUEENSHITHE. 


It was a child’s kindly thought, to repay in this 
pleasant way the debt, that Roxy’s honest New Eng- 
land pride had shrunk from receiving an equivalent in 
money for, but Mrs. McGreggor shook her wise head, 
and looked unutterable things: 

“Aye, but the bit lassie has aulder heids behint 
her,” she whispered in confidence to the Captain’s 
wife. “ Her mither’s oop to all kinds o’ tricks to gar 
puir folks a lift, and if she’s gotten wind o’ Roxy’s 
eerand here, we needna fash oursels aboot the ootcome 
o’ it.” 

That the two matrons were far more deeply im- 
pressed with the honor of an invitation to the White 
House than was Roxy herself was evident from the 
elaborate preparations that, almost as soon as the 
messenger had turned his back, began to be discussed 
between them. 

‘ ‘ What will you wear, Roxy ? ’ ’ demanded Mrs. 
Sol, an anxious frown wrinkling her comely face. 
“You’ve got to have an overgown and petticoat of 
some sort of fine goods, and lace f’r yer sleeves, and 
a neckerchief, and kid slippers, and silk stockins, and 
a lace apron, and — ” 

‘ ‘ Gude save us, gossip ! ’ ’ laughed Mrs. McGreggor, 
interrupting the other’s inventory of the articles needed 
to make her protege presentable as the guest of great- 
ness. “Ye’ll be after makin a milliner’s doll o’ the 
lassie, at that rate. Nae, nae, let the bunched oop 
gown an the petticoatie gae for ance, she’ll pass muster 
wioot ’em. The cambric ’ll be braw enow lackin the 
cape. ’ ’ 


PRUE'S NEW BONNET. 


I5I 

But here Roxy herself interposed with shamefaced 
protest against wearing the gown without the cape: 

“Why, I couldn’t be seen with my neck bare!'^ 
she cried, blushing to the very roots of her hair at the 
mere thought of such an indelicate exposure. ‘ ‘ Su^ch 
a rig would be fairly indecent.” 

Mrs. McGreggor smiled grimly: 

“That’s as ane thinks,” she remarked, with a know- 
ing nod to the Captain’s wife. “ But I’ve been tauld 
that, at their great balls and receptions, the fine leddies 
hae their gowns sae scrimpit at the tap, that a decent 
body must needs look the tither way, f ’ r shame’ s sake. ’ ’ 

“But there’s that pretty cape that you’ve been all 
winter workin’ on,” cried Mrs. Sol, “that ’ll be just 
the thing to cover yer neck; and there’s that lace apron 
that the Cap’n brought me from Paris, years ago, — 
you can wear that to give a touch o’ gentility to yer 
gown.” 

‘ ‘ And yer weelcome to my silk stockins and white 
satin slippers, that were a pairt o’ my ain weddin 
tocher,” put in the Scotch woman, not to be outdone 
in generosity, while Roxy looked silently from one to 
the other, uncertain whether to be glad or sorry over 
her friends’ proposal to deck her with borrowed plumes 
for this, her first flight into the great world of which 
she had heard so much, and knew so little. 

The same feeling of self respectful pride that had 
sealed her lips during those long, terrible weeks, when 
want and hunger had actually stared her in the face, 
made her shrink from accepting the proffered loans. 


152 


QUEENSHITHE. 


even while she gratefully recognized the kindly feeling 
that had prompted them. 

In truth, it was solely in deference to this feeling on 
her friends’ part, that she made no remonstrance 
when, dinner being over, her hostess resigned the care 
of the shop to Peg, and solemnly ushered the Cap- 
tain’s wife and Roxy into her own private sitting- 
room, where a small fire burning in the grate, and a 
pair of curling tongs, flanked by a pot of pomatum 
and a box of face powder, gave mute warning to the 
intended victim, of the fiery trial in store for her. 

“ Bring her claes in here, an the twa o’ us ’ll busk 
’er brawly. And mind ye hae the irons ready het 
when I ca’ for ’em,” commanded the dame with the 
tone and air of a Hubert to his factotum : 

“Heat me the irons hot, and look thou stand within the 
arras; 

When I strike my foot, . . 

and Roxy, albeit she had never heard of Shakespeare 
or the unfortunate “little prince,” felt a nervous chill 
creep down her back, as if in the presence of some 
vag^e, approaching peril that she must at least make 
the effort to avert: 

“ I never had my hair curled on an iron in my life,’^ 
she urged timidly as Mrs. Sol, in obedience to orders, 
thrust the curling iron into the fire, with an expression 
of stern determination upon her close shut lips. 

“As long as it don’t curl naturally like Prue’s, I 
think I’d rather wear it plain, as I always do.” 

“ Dinna fash yoursel’ ! I’ll gar it luik sae honest 


prue’s new bonnet. 


53 


that naebody ’ll ken it frae the real thing,” and the 
energetic tirewoman began winding one of the girl’s 
long, brown tresses about the heated iron with such 
incautious haste that the smell of singed hair filled the 
room, and drew a regretful cry from the victim, whose 
one beauty was being so ruthlessly despoiled. 

” It’s underneath, ’twont show much,” was Mrs. 
Sol’s consolatory remark,' as she rubbed the hot steel 
free from the scorched fragments. “I’ll look out, and 
not get it so hot next time.” 

And so the work went on, much to the satisfaction 
of the Captain’s wife, who watched the lofty structure 
as it grew in height and dignity, a veritable tower of 
frizzled, pomatumed and bepowdered hair. 

A cousin of Mrs. McGreggor’s had been lady’s 
maid to a dame of degree in the old country, and it 
was from her that the canny Scotch woman had 
acquired her knowledge of the art of fashionable 
hairdressing, which she was only too delighted to 
employ in making the homely little country maiden 
presentable, as the guest of greatness. 

“ I wad use the low cushion on common occasions,’^ 
she remarked, as with grave exactness she drew the 
heavy mass of hair upward from poor Roxy’s strained 
forehead, and arranged it over the lofty framework 
designed for its support, while the long, curled ends 
hung down at the back like the wig of a chief justice 
of the last century. 

But Mrs. Sol’s energetic soul could not long remain 
satisfied with being simply a looker-on : 


154 


QUEENSHITHE. 


“Youaintgot a stray hoop lay in’ round loose, I 
s’ pose? Roxy ought to have one run into the 
bottom hem of her petticoat, f r they say that every- 
body that is anything, wears ’em for a dress-up.” 

The hoop was quickly forthcoming, and now, the 
hairdressing being finished, Mrs. Mac found leisure to 
assist in other, if less important details of the toilet: 

“ You’re a bit choonkit aboot the middle,” and she 
eyed disapprovingly the girl’s as yet uncompressed 
waist. 

“ Lend a hand here, Meestress Bard’n an’ we’ll girt 
’er oop into a shape that a leddy sud wear.” 

Obediently “ Meestress Bard’n ” grasped an end of 
the designated stay-lace, and with her friend at the 
other, pulled with all the strength of her lusty, country 
bred arm. 

Roxy groaned, and gasped for breath, the two tire- 
women grew red in the face, and panted — ^but they 
still pulled. 

“ Hold hard, my hearties! ” shouted Mrs. Sol, for- 
getting in her excitement that she was not on ship- 
board. 

“Troth hinny, but we’ll brace ’er oop, taut an’ 
tight! ” 

And the laces, cracking ominously with the strain, 
were drawn up “taut and tight,” and securely fast- 
ened, heedless of the poor victim’s frantic gaspings 
and expostulations. 

“You won’t think anything aoout it when you once 
get used to it,” assured Mrs. Sol, as, with hands on 


prue’s new bonnet. 


155 


hips, she stood panting from her vigorous exercise, 

‘ ‘ Why, I know lots o’ girls that sleep in their stays — 
don’t take ’em off from weeks’ end to weeks’ end, and 
it gives ’em the prettiest, slimmest waists you ever 
saw. You wouldn’t think it now, but when / was 
married, the Cap’n could meet his two hands round 
my waist, I was that slim.” 

Possibly Roxy was too exhausted to continue the 
discussion, for after this, the final decorations went on 
without a word of protest from her, and when all was 
complete, the two women stood aside, and scanned 
their completed task with smiles of proud approval: 

“Aye, but she’s a bonny sicht!” murmured Mrs. 
Mac. “ Wi sic a pow she micht hold her ain wi’ a’ 
the queens an’ doocheses in the warld, let alane a 
plain, untitled body like the President’s daughter.” 

Mrs. Sol reddened a little at the implied distinction: 

“We’re all lords and ladies in this free country, as 
long as we behave ourselves. And let me tell you. 
Mis McGreggor, that the daughter of a man like 
Thomas Jefferson don’t need to stick a handle to her 
name to make ’er one of God’s nobility.” 

“ Nae doot, ye’re right,” hummed the other, so 
intent upon adjusting an artificial rosebud in Roxy’s 
hair that the irritation of her republican friend passed 
unnoticed by her. 

“ Noo, lassie,” pointing to the big looking-glass 
over the mantel, ‘ ‘ tak a gude look at yersel, and 
thank the Lord that He gave ye the makins o’ sic a 
bonny bit o’ genteelity as yer freends hae convartit ye 
intilt.” 


QUEENSHITHE. 


156 

Roxy looked, and blushed, and looked again — 
what was it ? Who was it — that strangely bedizened 
creature, who seemed, somehow, to be all head and — 
HOOP, with a little, scared face looking out somewhere 
from the midst, its nose unnaturally reddened, and its 
cheeks unnaturally paled, (thanks to that straightened 
stay-lace and the excitement attendant upon such an 
unusual toilet.) 

The god Thor, hidden in Hymir’s stolen beer-pot, 
whose “handles reached down to his heels,” was not 
more completely disguised than was our modest, 
simple, little country maiden, by the unwonted finery 
with which the affectionate zeal of her friends had bur- 
dened her. 

It was not herself, not the real Roxy Rae who 
looked at her out of those troubled eyes, and, with a 
remembrance of all the kindly painstaking that must 
go for naught, the girl burst into tears of unfeigned 
sorrow and regret: 

“ It aint me, and I can’t make believe that it w,” 
she sobbed. ‘ ‘ I can’ t think of anything but a great 
dandelion gone to seed, — all head, and nothin’ worth 
speakin’ of besides.” 

It was a douche of cold water, ice cold at that, upon 
the good ladies’ fervent enthusiasm, and they are not 
to be too severely blamed if, in that moment of suddenly 
checked satisfaction, some natural indignation mingled 
with the persuasions and arguments with which they 
tried to overthrow the girl’s firm determination to go 
to the White House in her own simple, homely dress, 
or not at all. 


prue’s new bonnet. 


157 


“A pretty figger you’ll cut, and a great idea the 
President’s folks ’ll get of the Bestport people, if 
they take jyou f’r a specimen!” snapped Mrs. Sol, 
quite as much in sorrow as in anger, as Roxy meekly 
withdrew to her own room, to undo as best she could, 
the work of the last hour. 

But Mrs. Mac, with the honest candor of her race, 
could not find it in her heart to condemn the sincerity 
that could not bring itself to flaunt in borrowed plumes 
even to please its best friends: 

‘‘The lassie’s nae fule,” she admitted as, with a sigh 
of regret, she put the curling irons away, and pro- 
ceeded to set the cluttered room to rights. 

“ Mayhap she’d be like David in Saul’s armor after 
a’, and the sling and pebbles fra her ain bit burnie 
may better win the day, bein as they’re her natural 
weepons. ’ ’ 

Mrs. Sol answered only with a weary grumble. 

She knew her young neighbor too well to try to 
combat a resolution once formed, and her only bit of 
satisfaction, as she watched behind discreetly-drawn 
curtains, the President’s carriage roll away, with Roxy 
seated in solitary state upon its drab broadcloth 
cushion, was in the proud anticipation of telling the 
good folks at home of this unexampled honor that 
had befallen her modest favorite: 

“ Won’t their eyes stick out,” she chuckled in an 
aside to Peg, ‘ ‘ when they hear that Roxy Rae went 
to the White House to dinner, and rode there in the 
President’s own keeridge! ” 


158 


QUEENSHITHE. 


Peg grinned triumphantly. 

‘ ‘ But won’ t it be gall an’ wormwood to the widder 
Jeff, though?” The Captain’s wife nodded, and 
gave the girl a sympathetic nudge with her elbow: 

“The widder’ 11 have ter haul down her colors be- 
fore long, and Vx my part I’ll be mighty glad of it 
— she’s sailed under the black flag long enough.” 

And Roxy herself in her delight and bewilderment, 
actually forgot for the time, the primary object of her 
visit to the Capital, and when once inside the Presi- 
dent’s house which, comparatively rude and unfin- 
ished as it then was, wore in her eyes the similitude of 
a palace, she lost sight of herself completely in rapt 
wonderment and delight. Not so much at the stately 
rooms with their rich furnishings — the pictures that 
looked down upon her from the lofty walls, or the few 
bits of rare statuary from which she could scarce 
withdraw her charmed eyes, but at the inmates of 
that lordly mansion, who seemed in dress, speech, 
and manner, like beings from another sphere. 

The gentle mother, lovely in her mature matron- 
hood, whose every word, and look, and smile revealed 
the unaffected kindliness of a generous nature, refined 
and polished by contact with the best society upon 
both sides of the Atlantic; the children, merry, bright- 
eyed boys and girls, full of innocent fun and frolic, 
yet never by any chance, rude or disrespectful to their 
elders, blending perfect freedom of speech and action 
with that tender reverence so becoming in the young 
and so grateful to the old, and which seemed so 


prue’s new bonnet. 


159 


fittingly bestowed upon the man whom a nation had 
delighted to honor as the apostle and representative of 
the most perfect system of democracy that the world 
has ever known. The man who, perhaps, more than 
any other, demonstrated not only to the young re- 
public, but to the world at large, how the ruler of a 
great people, chosen by the will of that people, may, 
simply by the nobility and purity of his own char- 
acter, adorn the highest station, and while undeniably 
the first gentleman in the land, may dignify and grace 
his office without any of those advantitious aids of 
pomp and ceremony to which the great ones of earth 
have, from the beginning, owed so large a part of that 
‘ ‘ hedged-in divinity ’ ’ with which personal character 
and individual action have had little or nothing to do. 

So simple, so devoid of useless ceremony was the 
life at the White House of that day, that our little 
country maiden was soon as perfectly at home with 
the grandchildren of the President as if they had been 
her next door neighbors all her life. 

The dinner which, as the guest of Miss Lucy Ran- 
dolph, she shared with the children in the nursery, 
was something for our country-bred damsel to talk 
about and enlarge upon to the latest day of her life. 

The dainty china, the delicately patterned napery — 
white as Northern snows — the several courses, served 
with ceremonious exactness; the dessert of delicious 
hot-house grapes and peaches — a royal fruit of which 
she had heard, but never before seen — all the little 
table niceties of which rural Bestport was, at its best, 


i6o 


QUEENSHITHE. 


entirely ignorant, struck upon her unaccustomed 
senses like a glimpse of that wonderful ‘ ‘ House 
Beautiful,” wherein Peg’s fertile fancy was wont to 
disport itself, for the benefit of her less imaginative 
friends. 

Strangest of all, however, to Roxy, with her in- 
born hatred of negro slavery, joined to a decided 
prejudice against the victims of that institution, was 
the air of gentle authority assumed by the colored 
nurse over her juvenile charge, for while waiting upon 
them with punctilious ceremony, she took careful note 
of every lapse of table etiquette on their part, quietly 
but firmly calling attention to it in the half authora- 
tive, half caressing fashion of her race: 

“Tuck in yer elbows, honey — you member what you 
ma say about pigin wings?” — reminded the dusky 
mentor and the young gentleman who had received 
the rebuke made haste to lower the offending elbows 
to their proper altitude, with a sheepish, but by no 
means offended air. 

“ Don’t smack yer lips so, missy! ” with a warning 
look at the little offender. “De lady tink you no 
bringin’ up at all. ’ ’ 

This to the little ones, but even Miss Lucy, who sat 
at the head of the table and gave her orders like a 
grown up hostess, was not allowed to indulge herself 
in a breach of table manners unrebuked. 

“You done forgot. Miss Lucy, what yer ma said bout 
de handle of de tea-cup bein’ made to hold on by. ’ ’ 

She spoke in a lowered tone, but Roxy caught the 


prue’s new bonnet. l6l 

words, and glancing up at the instant, she interrupted 
the look that passed between mistress and maid, and 
became at once conscious of her own clumsy handling 
of the delicate bit of china, conscious too that it was 
to keep her in countenance that the carefully trained 
little maiden had deliberately broken this common 
rule of table etiquette. That true politeness is kind- 
ness kindly shown, was never perhaps better exempli- 
fied than in this little, unstudied act of a mere child, 
to spare another possible mortification, and at that 
moment Roxy learned one of the best lessons of her 
life, that the root of gentle manners must be in the 
heart, and that all outward ceremonies and customs to 
be genuine must spring from that source alone. It 
was this thought that set her at her ease amidst all 
this unwonted grandeur, making her forget her first 
awkward shyness, and prompting her to do her best 
to repay her childish entertainers by the same little 
arts that had always made her so popular with the 
youngsters of her own neighborhood: 

Cat’s Cradle, Fox and Geese, even “ intra, mintra, 
cutra-corn’ ’ proved as delightful, every whit, to the little 
Southerners as to their New England cousins, and 
when Roxy, with much ceremony, initiated them into 
the mysteries of the new game, “ Marching to Mira- 
machi,” the nursery rang again with the glad young 
voices, shouting with little heed to tune or time, the 
favorite rhyme of the boys and girls neighboring to 
the Canadian border: 


i 62 


QUEENSHITHE. 


“ Off we go to Merrymashe, 

With a load of sugar and tea, 

The sooner we’re off the better for we.” 

A queer place that for a smuggling song, but neither 
Roxy nor her rollicking little playfellows had the small- 
est idea of anything unlawful in the lively refrain that 
even Mammy, who was by far the most dignified 
member of the little party, could not deny herself a 
share in. Round and round danced the happy chil- 
dren, with laughter and song, until Lucy bethinking 
herself of her duties as hostess, insisted upon taking 
her guest from the unwilling hands of the little ones, 
for a sight seeing stroll through the stately rooms, ex- 
plaining the uses to which each was to be put when 
finally completed and furnished; and with a child’s 
natural frankness, discontentedly comparing the many 
comforts and elegancies of the dear old Monticello 
home with the bareness and make-shifts of the Presi- 
dential mansion: 

“This great draughty house is enough to give one 
the chills all the time,’’ she declared, shrugging her 
shoulders, as, in passing along one of the lofty corri- 
dors, the chill evening air blew in at a hundred unde- 
fended cracks and crevices. 

‘ ‘At home all our rooms are finished and furnished, 
and if they are fewer and smaller, there’s plenty of 
room for everybody. And oh, such good times as we 
have, especially when grandpapa is at home. Last 
summer he had Alick make us the loveliest doll’s 
house, with shelves for Cornelia’s tea-set, and a drawer 


prue’s new bonnet. 


163 


underneath, where we keep our best doll’s clothes, — 
all except Mamselle Polie’s , — she has a fine trunk all 
her own, to keep hers in, and now she’ll have to have 
a bandbox, for — ” 

She stopped suddenly in her childish chatter, and 
cast a swift, eager look at her companion’s face: 

“ Pardon me,” she half whispered, with her pretty, 
old fashioned air of gentle courtesy, ‘ ‘ but I forgot all 
about the most important thing. Mamma says that 
grandpapa will be at leisure this evening, and that you 
must tell him all about your invention, and see what 
he thinks about your chances of getting a patent on 
it.” 

Roxy’s first natural impulse was to shrink from 
bringing so small a matter as her own personal venture 
to this man, who bore the cares of a nation upon his 
shoulders; her next, (remembering the kindly interest 
that he had already shown in her,) was to follow her 
new friend without a word of protest, into the family 
sitting-room, where, with his youngest grandchild upon 
his knee, and his beautiful daughter opposite, where he 
could watch with fatherly love and pride, the flickering 
of the cheery firelight upon her fair, too delicate face, 
sat the President, his ruddy locks whitened by time 
and care, yet still erect, vigorous, and keen-eyed as 
when, years before, he had put his master-hand to that 
grand declaration of human rights that proclaimed the 
birth of a nation. 

He smiled kindly upon the timid stranger, and mo- 
tioned her to a seat by his side: 


164 


QUEENSHITHE. 


“And SO,” he said, himself breaking the ice, in 
sympathy with her, evident embarressment, and 
nodding across to his daughter, ‘ ‘ and so we have a 
claimant for ‘ queens-hithe ’ here in the very heart of 
our Republic ? ’ ’ 

Mrs. Randolph smiled, and Lucy asked curiously: 
What is ‘queens-hithe,’ grandpapa? ” 

Her grandfather glanced thoughtfully at the modest, 
downcast face of the visitor, before replying, and when 
he did, it was with the painstaking exactness that 
characterized whatever the man wrote or said: 

‘ ‘ Hithe is the old English word for a small port or 
harbor, and a great many years ago, one of the Lon- 
don ports was the property of the reigning queen, and 
was called for that reason, the ‘ queen’s hithe.’ All the 
vessels that unloaded at this port paid toll to the queen 
herself for this privilege. And really, I don’t see,” 
he added, laughing, ‘ ‘ why our republican queens 
should not have each a ‘ hithe ’ ’ of her own, if she has 
the wit and courage to claim it. ’ ’ 

Mrs. Randolph merrily clapped her hands, in hearty 
approval of this sentiment: 

‘ ‘ I see you are coming round to my view of things, 
father,” she said, with a rougish significance that sim- 
ple Roxy failed to comprehend. 

‘ ‘ If all men are born free and with equal rights, 
ought not the same truth to apply to women as well ? ’ ’ 
Her father pretended to frown, although his eyes 
twinkled merrily beneath his heavy brows: 

“Ah, Patsy,” and he shook his head with an air of 


prue’s new bonnet. 165 

assumed severity, ‘ ‘ you would have served to point a 
moral for old Cato, in his plea against the over 
indulgence of your sex by their liege lords.” 

Then turning to Roxy, he began questioning her in 
regard to her invention, but so gently and naturally 
that, before she herself fairly realized it, she had given, 
in her own rustic yet straightforward speech, the 
whole story of her toils, her hopes, and her cruel dis- 
couragements, with the reasons that made her appli- 
cation for a patent an absolute necessity. 

The President smiled, and Mrs. Randolph’s gentle 
face took on a frown of womanly indignation as Roxy 
told of Squire Biddle’s refusal to aid her on account of 
her sex. 

“ But it’s an invention just as much as if a man had 
thought it out,” interrupted Lucy, childishly emphatic 
as she caught the amused twinkle in her grandfather’s 
eyes, while Mrs. Randolph added hastily: 

“And a beautiful and useful one too.” 

The President himself made no comment, but at the 
conclusion of her story, he laid his hand kindly upon 
the girl’s head, with the encouraging words: 

“You have shown yourself ingenious, patient and 
persevering, — three qualities that inventors, be they 
men or women, must have to ensure them success. 
And if you wish me to, I will present your case to the 
Commissioner of Patents, and see what can be done 
for you.” 

Not until then, had Roxy fully realized the strain 
upon her nerves during all these weeks of anxious 


QUEENSHITHE, 


1 66 

suspense, for, with the almost certainty of success 
before her, she actually broke down, and cried like a 
baby: 

“ Oh sir,” and too grateful to be timid, she drew 
down and kissed reverently the hand that rested on 
her head. ” To think of such as thee^ taking all this 
trouble just for me! ” 

Little Lucy and her mother were softly crying from 
sympathy, and Jefferson’s own voice was a bit husky 
as he said, with an earnestness that none of his listen- 
ers ever forgot: 

'‘^Any matter^ however trivial ^ that concerns the 
humblest citizen of our Republic^ claims just as high 
consideration and careful attention from the servants of 
that Republic, as it would were he the foremost man of 
his age, with a claim involving millions. And I mean 
no irreverence, when I say that a republican govern- 
ment should be modeled upon that of the great Ruler 
above, who takes thought as tenderly for the meanest 
insect as for the king upon his throne.” 


CHAPTER X. 


LOVE IS MIGHTIER THAN LAW. 

\ X / ell, Roxy, — here’s yer last ‘good bite! ’ 

V V and Mrs. Sol dropped into the girl’s 
eagerly extended hand a neatly folded letter, ad- 
dressed in Prue’s unpracticed hand: 

‘ ‘ The ‘ Belle o’ Bestport ’ got in yesterday, and 
Cap’n Walker brought this letter up f’r you. ‘And 
now,’ says I to the Cap’n — ‘Roxy’s got her patent, 
and had a grand good time to boot, and we’re all 
ready to start f’r home to-morrer, so this letter from 
Prue’ll be her last good bite' ” 

Peg looked up inquiringly: “What do you mean 
by that ? ’ ’ she asked. 

Mrs. Sol laughed: “ Why, that’s what my mother 
used to say when the last part of anything was uncom- 
monly good — better’ n the first. She got it from her 
mother, who was one of the earliest settlers on the 
Maine coast, and had to rough it pretty hard f r the 
first few years. They hadn’t but one cow, so butter 
was scurse with ’em, and the children had to eat so 
much maple syrup on their bread that they got dretful 
sick of it. So, to stop their grumblin’, their mother 
used ter put a dab of butter in the very middle of a big 
slice of rye an’ injun bread, spreadin’ all the rest with 


QUEENSHITHE. 


1 68 

syrup, and then she’d say: ‘Now eat all round the 
edges till you come to the butter, and that’ll be the 
last good bite. ’ ’ ’ 

Peg nodded her appreciation of the pioneer matron’s 
ruse, but all the time her eyes were upon Roxy’s face, 
watching its changing color and expression, while 
slowly spelling out, word by word, the contents of her 
sister’s letter. At the end, she crumpled the paper in 
her trembling hand, while she exclaimed distressfully: 

“ Oh dear, dear! An awful thing has happened to 
Dorindy, — they’ve arrested her for the murder of Peg, 
and she' s in jail^ waitin’ her trial at the next term o’ 
court.” 

Her voice was broken, and even Mrs. Sol looked 
sympathetic, but Peg’s black eyes had in them a gleam 
of mischievous triumph: 

“Good enough for ’er!” she muttered, but the 
Captain’s wife took her up with a sharpness that was 
evidently unexpected under the circumstances: 

“Hold yer tongue. Peg! The meanest thing a 
body can do is ter kick an enemy when he’s once 
down. I d’clare, I wouldn’t a’ thought it of ye, — 
knowin’ as we all do that the widder is as innercent of 
murder as an unborn child, — to be glad that she shou’d 
have this disgrace an’ trouble come upon ’er. I was 
the means of gettin’ you away on the sly, — f’r Pll 
allow that she didn’t do the fair thing by ye, — but 
when I go back. I’ll jest take you along with me, and 
mend all the trouble, by provin’ that there haint been 
no murder committed^ after all. ’ ’ 


prue’s new bonnet. 169 

Peg set her white teeth tightly, while her eyes blazed 
defiance: 

“No you won’t, — f’r I won’t budge one step , — so 
there! ” she retorted savagely. “You can get ’er out 
o’ jail by swearin’ that I’m alive and well, but as to 
goin’ back to her, Pd die firstP 

Mrs. Sol’s blood was up now, and she was about to 
reassert her determination to take the girl with her, 
in yet stronger terms, but Roxy interposed: 

“Hear what Prue writes about it,” and she read, 
with tremulous lips: 

The Partridge girls were the ones that first set the story 
afloat. They found an apron of Peg’s under a stone in the 
cellar, all stained with blood. And they whispered it about, 
to this one and that, till at last the whole town was up in arms 
about it, and the selectmen made a search, and sure enough, 
they found it just as Plumy had said, and then they couldn’t 
do no other than to arrest Dorindy for the girl’s murder. 
They said she acted like a crazy woman when the officers 
went for her, — swore she never laid a hand on Peg, but that 
she was guilty of her murder, all the same, And she wrung 
her hands, and cried, when Elder Dexter went to the jail to 
see her, and wanted him to pray for her, for she owned she’d 
been a dreadful wicked woman, and that Peg’s death laid at 
her door. The Jimmisons, that keep the jail, say that some 
nights, she walks the floor all night long, sighing and groan- 
ing, and that she don’t eat enough to keep a chicken alive. 
They say she’s wasted away so that her own mother wouldn’t 
know her. I pity her so that I want to go and see her, but I 
don’t dare to go alone, and am waiting for you to get home 
so that we can go together. I don’t believe, for my part, 
that she ever killed Peg or anybody else, meanin^ to, but I 
don’t know what to make of that bloody apron, and she de- 
clares that she don’t either, so there it is. 


QUEENSHITHE. 


170 

“ No more she don’t,” interrupted Peg, with a queer 
little laugh, that had nothing of mirth in it. ‘ ‘ The 
fact is, I spilt some red dye on that apron, and I knew 
she’d give me Hail Columby if she found it out, so I 
hid it under that old grave stun in the cellar.” 

“You’ll have to swear to that before the proper 
authorities,” cried Mrs. Sol, while Roxy added, in her 
gentler tones: 

“ I don’t suppose you’ll have to swear to anything, 
so long as you show yerself alive and well, to the 
Bestport folks.” 

“ But I aint goin’ to show myself to the Bestport 
folks,” stubbornly insisted Peg. “ Do you think I’d 
be such a fool as to give up my good berth here, and 
go back f’r that woman to kick and cuff again? not 
by a long chalk, let me tell you. ’ ’ 

“As to that,” hurriedly interposed the Captain’s 
wife, ‘ ‘ I give you my word that you shall come back 
here, the next trip that the Cap’n makes, if you want 
to. And if the widder makes any fuss about it. I’ll 
pay her for yer time out o’ my own pocket, and trust 
to yer honesty, to pay me back, when you can earn 
the money.” 

Still Peg shook her head sulkily: 

“Your word, — yours and Roxy’s, — ’ll be jest as 
good as f’r me to show myself there.” 

“ In one way, yes, — but‘” and Roxy laid her hand 
with a softly persuasive touch upon the girl’s arm, 
“the fact that you are alive and that there’s been no 
murder done, after all, will clear Dorindy from that 


prue’s new bonnet. 


I7I 

suspicion, but there’s something more behind that. 
You know, and I know that Dorindy Hackett is a very 
proud woman, and cares more for the speech o’ people 
than any other woman in Bestport. Now, before I 
came away, I heard everybody talkin’ about her abuse 
of you, and they went beyond all reason, makin’ her 
out more of a devil than a Christian woman. So, the 
fact of your bein’ alive, while it will prove that she 
didn’t kill you, won’t stop the gossip unless you show 
by goin’ home with us that you bear her no ill will, 
and aint afraid to trust yerself in her neighborhood. 
Remember, that for seven years you ate her bread, and 
was sheltered under her roof, — something is due her 
from you, in such a strait as this.” 

She had struck the right chord at last, for the sturdy 
independence that formed so prominent a trait in the 
girl’s character responded with a quick, decisive: 

“ I don’t calculate to take what I can’t pay for, from 
nobody. I’ll go back with you to-morrer.” 

Well pleased, Mrs. Sol would have expressed her 
approval, but a warning look from Roxy checked the 
words upon her lips, and as Peg left the room, she 
could not forbear the whispered comment: 

‘That girl’s a queer critter as ever lived, — she hates 
the widder like pizon, and that’s the very reason that 
she can’t bear to feel that she’s in her debt. If ’twant 
f’rthat, I honestly believe she wouldn’t care if they 
actually hung the woman for a crime that she never 
committed, — she’s hard as the nether mill-stun. Peg 


172 


QUEENSHITHE. 


But Roxy had not studied that dark, unemotional 
face for years, for nothing, and she alone had noted 
the reluctant tears in the girl’s eyes, that Prue’s simple 
story of the unjustly accused woman had called forth, 
nor was she at all surprised at the cheerful alacrity with 
which she made her preparations for the unanticipated 
journey. 

“ I s’ pose ^twas kind o’ hard for the widder, livin’ 
all alone so in the house, with Granny and me both 
gone.” 

And Peg paused a moment in her work of packing, 
with a sympathetic note in her voice, and a quick, 
half ashamed glance at Roxy’s grave face: 

‘ ‘And you say she reely seemed to feel it, my goin’ 
off as I did?” 

“Indeed she did.” Roxy spoke with a decision 
that evidently impressed her companion: 

“ How you talk! Now, I wouldn’t a’ thought 
she’d cared whether I was dead or alive; but,” care- 
fully folding the sleeves of her best gown into as small 
a compass as possible, and trying hard to speak with 
an indifference that she was far from feeling: you 

s’ pose now, that they put handcuffs on ’er, when they 
took 'er to jail f ” 

It was no use, — and the girl broke down completely 
at the utterance of that terrible thought, and the hot 
tears fell unheeded upon the folded gown, as she 
sobbed pityingly: 

“It’s awful rough on the widder, and I, — yes, Pm 
real sorry for 'er," 


prue’s new bonnet. 


173 


“ Come, come, Dorindy, — cheer up. Here’s Mr. 
Graves, with his new chaise, waitin’ to take us right 
home.” 

And Roxy put her arm tenderly about the widow’s 
shrinking form, and gently urged her down the path 
that led from the jailer’s front door to the near high- 
way, where honest Nat Graves, eager to atone for his 
harsh judgment of the falsely accused woman, was 
waiting in state to take her to her own home. 

“I’m afraid the neighbors ’ll be on the watch to see 
me go by,” whispered the trembling woman, with a 
scared look in the direction of the village, whose 
clustered houses caught the level rays of the setting 
sun upon their gray roofs with that air of lazy indiffer- 
ence with which a thankless soul receives God’s most 
precious gifts of air and sunshine. 

“Well, what if they do look at us? ” rejoined Roxy 
bravely. ‘ ‘ Everybody knows now that you are per- 
fectly innocent of the crime laid to your charge, and 
they’ll be glad enough to see you — ” she was about to 
say “out,” but checked herself, shrinking from the 
dreadful reminder that the word must suggest, — a 
delicate thoughtfulness of which the jailer’s wife, 
whose good will had prompted her to walk a few steps 
with them, was incapable: 

“Land sakes alive. Mis Hackett! what a queer 
woman you be. Now I shou’d think you’d be so 
ferce to let folks see that you’re really out o’ jail, and 
as good as the best of ’em, that you’d want every soul 
to see you on yer way home. ’F I was you. I’d jest 


174 


QUEENSHITHE. 


keep a stiff upper lip, an’ brazen it out, for jest as sure 
as you go ter bangin’ yer head and lookin’ meechin, 
they’ll begin ter say right off that you’ve got somethin’ 
to be ashamed of, if you didn’t kill the girl.” 

A dry sob burst from the widow’s white lips, and 
she stopped, with her face turned irresolutely toward 
the house that she had just left, as if half inclined to 
seek its seclusion once more. But Roxy’s cheery 
voice was in her ear, and Roxy’s warm hand clasped 
her own reassuringly: 

“You’ve suffered a cruel wrong, Dorindy, and 
there isn’t a man, woman, nor child in all Bestport 
that won’t feel for you, now it’s known how innocent 
you was. Mark my words, you’ll find you’ve got 
more friends and well wishers in this town than you 
ever had in all your life before.” 

To this the widow made no reply, but as honest Nat 
shook her hand with a warmth that he had never 
shown before, and in his blunt, but manly fashion, 
expressed his penitence for his unjust judgment of her, 
the look of hopeless humiliation gave place to a wan 
smile, although she said little in reply, only brushed 
away a tear, — one of the many that had washed all 
the hardness from her face, — and clung all the more 
closely to Roxy, whose pleasant, gossipy descriptions 
of what she had seen and heard during her stay in 
Washington, occupied the time during their short 
ride, distracting the poor woman’s thoughts from her 
own pain and humiliation, and filling up the gaps in 
conversation, of which all three felt the unavoidable 
awkwardness. 


prue’s new bonnet. 


175 


That the terrible accusation brought against her, and 
her subsequent treatment as a suspected criminal, 
would have aroused the proud woman’s indignation, 
and embittered her against the community in general 
for its ready acceptance of the story of her guilt, had 
been a foregone conclusion in Roxy’s mind, but for 
this spirit of utter humiliation, this dumb acceptance 
alike of blame or kindness, she was entirely unpre- 
pared. The self poised, arbitrary, and proud spirited 
woman, who had held her own at whatever cost to the 
feelings and rights of others, was now a broken down, 
timid, and prematurely aged creature, whose one idea 
seemed to be to hide herself from the eyes of the 
world, whose pity woufd evidently hurt her only a 
little less than its blame. 

The girl’s tender heart bled for her, and when upon 
the threshold of her own home, the poor woman 
stumbled and nearly fell in her eagerness to gain its 
shelter, she could not forbear a pitying caress, the 
first that she had ever in all her life ventured to bestow 
upon her cold-natured, unresponsive kinswoman. 

“ Come, come, Dorindy! Here we are at home 
again, all safe and sound. And here’s Prue,” as the 
fair girl came forward with some natural embarrass- 
ment, and with an instinct of womanly tenderness be- 
gan to unfasten the half bewildered woman’s outer 
wraps. 

“ Does the house feel comfortable to you, cousin 
Dorindy ? Where it’s been shut up so it seemed kind 
o’ damp, so I built a fire in the sitting-room fireplace, 
and left the kitchen door into the front entry open.” 


176 


QUEENSHITHE. 


There was a respectful solicitude in the girl’s tones, 
that acted as balm upon the wounded pride of her 
kinswoman, and drew from her a smile of genuine 
pleasure: 

“I’m ever so much obliged to you, Prue, — it’s 
warm as toast here.” And dropping into her favorite 
chair close beside the blazing hearth, the widow 
stretched out her feet toward the glowing coals, with a 
long, deep sigh of satisfaction: 

“And — why how, in the world, did you happen to 
remember that I always changed the rugs the first 
week in May, puttin’ the square one in front of the 
fireplace, and the round, braided one by that window, 
where I always set with my sewing ? ’ ’ 

Prue gave her sister a significant nod and smile, 
while the widow evidently unconscious that her 
remark had gone unanswered, continued to look about 
her with an air of housewifely approval: 

“And my monthly rose has got three buds, — I 
wonder who thought to put it in the east window, 
where I always move it when the sun begins to be too 
hot in the south window ? And there’s the mourning 
piece that used to hang in mother’s room, has got her 
own death written on it, right under Mr. Hackett’s, — 
written beautifully, too , — did jyou do that, Prue?” 

Prue blushed, and looked a little embarressed: 

“No indeed, — I — that is, I didn’t do it myself, 
young Dr. Deane wrote it for me.” 

“’Twas kind in you to think of it, and I’m very 
much obliged to you both.” 


prue’s new bonnet. 


177 


And with this, for her, hearty acknowledgment of 
the girl’s forethought, and the young doctor’s skill in 
penmanship, Dorindy went on to notice with words of 
praise a score of littie changes, that, strangely enough, 
showed no variation from her usual seasonable pro- 
gramme. It was home indeed to the returned pris- 
oner, and little by little, the prison shadow lifted itself 
from her worn face, and something of the old house- 
wifely contentment settled down in its place. 

Strangely enough, she had shown no curiosity in 
regard to the occupant of the kitchen, whose brisk 
footsteps passing to and fro in preparing the forth- 
coming meal, were distinctly audible, and mingled 
pleasantly with the musical clatter of china and the 
soft purring of the steaming teakettle. But all at 
once, a swift color flooded her pale face as the door 
was gently opened, and a voice that she had never 
thought to hear again in this world, called out in the 
old, well remembered tones: 

“Say, Mis Hackett, which ’ll you have f’r supper, 
the quinch preserves or the honey that Cap’n Sol’s 
wife sent over, with her compliments ? ’ ’ 

The widow started to her feet, and stared dumbly at 
the apparition in the doorway as if doubting the 
evidence of her own senses. The voice, the face, the 
form were all those of the missing bound girl, but 
instead of the old sullen frown, a smile at once mis- 
chievous and shy, illumined the dark face and made it 
for the moment really pretty. 

‘ ‘ Which ? ’ ’ she repeated, with an impatient flourish 


178 


QUEENSHITHE. 


of the long handled spoon, with which the widow was- 
wont to dip her preserves from the depths of the jar, 
in which she had kept them from time immemorial. 

Mrs. Jeff made a step forward, and held out twa 
trembling palms toward the waiting figure: 

“Peg! I didn’t never think this of you, — cornin’' 
back to me after all you’d gone through here. Roxy 
said you had a good home in Washington, and I 
thought, of course, you was there now. Does this 
mean that you, — ” the words died in her throat, for 
this was the first time in all her life that the proud 
woman had humbled herself as a self convicted peni- 
tent, — but the next moment she went bravely on, — 
‘ ‘ that you forgive mef' 

A strange look passed over the girl’s dusky face, 
a look curiously compounded of wonder, triumph, and, 
overmastering all, of infinite compassion and tender- 
ness that, as she took half shyly the proffered hand in 
both her own, found expression in the softly spoken, 
but no less characteristic words: 

“Yes, Mis Hackett, I forgive ye from the very 
bottom of my heart, and, — I hope you won’t lay it up 
aginst me that I was the means of your havin’ all this 
trouble and bother. ’ ’ 

Roxy turned aside with wet eyes, and tender hearted 
Prue sobbed aloud, but the widow straightened her- 
self manfully, while something of the old determina- 
tion showed itself in the increased steadiness of her 
tones as she said, still clinging to Peg’s hand as if for 
support: 


prue’s new bonnet. 


179 


“ I’ve got a confession to make, and till that’s off 
of my mind, I can’t bring myself to break bread with 
them that I’ve wronged, nor settle down in peace in 
my own home once more. The fact is. I’ve been a 
dretful wicked woman, while all the while I’ve been 
settin’ myself up as one o’ the salt o’ the earth, and 
jest as sure of heaven as if I was already wearin’ my 
crown and white robe. I thought, and thought hon- 
estly, that if I kept my regular standin’ in the church, 
paid my church and missionary tax, and went to all 
the meetin’s on Sundays and week-days, that I was 
doin’ my whole duty as a Christian woman. I never 
mistrusted that cheatin’ Roxy out of her straw work, 
and half starvin’ Peg, had anything to do with my 
religious life. I said to myself that everybody had the 
right to look out f’r number one, and if they wa’ant 
smart enough to do it, why, that was their lookout, not 
mine. 

“’Twas when Peg disappeared, and I honestly 
thought that she’ d made way with herself, that I first 
begun to wake up to the idea that, let me dodge it as 
I would, I was my brother’s keeper, after all, and I 
was that wretched that, when I found I was really sus- 
pected of killin’ the child, I wa’ant so awfully taken 
by surprise as you’d think I’d been. I’d accused 
myself so long of bein’ the cause of her death, that if 
the sheriff hadn’t warned me to keep a still tongue in 
my head, I shou’d a’ spoke right out, then and there, 
and told everybody what I knew, and how I was really 
the means of her death. 


i8o 


QUEENSHITHE. 


There was a Bible in my cell, and when I couldn’t 
bear my own thoughts no longer, Fd go to that, hopin’ 
to find some word of comfort. But it was always sure 
to open to the story of Joseph and his brethren, and 
all I could see was: 

* We are verily guilty concerning our brother.’ 

Fd read that over and over, till it seemed as if my 
brain was on fire. I couldn’t shed a tear, and f ’r days 
at a time, I couldn’t eat nor sleep, while every time I 
shet my eyes, that dreadful text seemed right before me. 

At last I couldn’t stand it no longer, and I knelt 
down there on the bare stone floor, with only the stars 
lookin’ in on me, and told my sin to God ’imself, and 
made a solemn vow that if I ever had my liberty 
again, Fd do all I could to right the wrongs that my 
life had been so full of.” 

“Oh, Dorindy! ” sobbed Roxy, “you was really 
too harsh in yer judgment of yerself, — you’ve done a 
good many kind things, at one time or another, 
and—” 

But the widow silenced her by a motion of her 
hand, and taking a key from her bosom, she proceeded 
to unlock a drawer in the old secretary where the 
deceased Hackett had kept his private papers, and 
taking therefrom a folded paper, she gave it to Roxy, 
with the half whispered command: 

“ Read it, — out loud.” 

The girl did so, and to her unbounded astonishment, 
found it to be a deed, formally made out, and wit- 
nessed by Granny and a consumptive nephew, who 


prue’s new bonnet. l8l 

had died only a few months afterwards, conveying to 
the heirs of Egbert Rae all the fertile acres that had 
originally belonged to said Rae. Approaching death 
had, it seemed, loosened the miser’s clutch upon his ill 
gotten gains, and at the last moment, he had done his 
best to repair the wrong done his orphaned kinsfolk. 

Mrs. Jeff had dropped into her chair, where, during 
the reading of the deed, she sat with her face shaded 
by one trembling hand, while tears of bitter shame 
and remorse dropped silently and unheeded from be- 
tween her thin fingers. 

Of the two however, Roxy was really the more 
embarrassed: 

“I, — I — why Dorindy, I wouldn’t ’a thought, — ” 

“ Of course you wouldn’t,” assented the widow, in 
a sad monotone, ‘ ‘ no more would I a’ thought it of 
myself, once. And if I’d known about it at the time 
’twas made, I shouldn’t been tempted to keep it hid. 
But when it come into my hands, long afterwards, 
when the witnesses was either dead or too childish to 
remember much about it, the enemy put it into my 
head to jest keep it out o’ sight f’r the present, at any 
rate. I reasoned this way,, that I’d put out a good 
deal of money and work on the land, and ’twant no 
more’n fair that I should have the profits from it. 
Then besides, seein’ you was my nearest of kin, and 
heir by law to my property when I’d done with it, 
Twould come into your hands sometime, anyway, and 
a few years more or less couldn’t make no great dif- 
ference to you. But after my downM, I come to 


i 82 


QUEENSHITHE. 


myself, and found I was a selfish, wicked, dishonest 
woman, instead of the ‘elect lady’ that I’d prided 
myself on bein’ like, all these years, and I tell you 
now, that that knowledge was a harder thing to bear, 
and broke me down worse than to have my old neigh- 
bors and brethren in the church think I was a mur- 
derer, and refuse to come near me in my disgrace; 
harder even than to have Plumy Partridge, when they 
was takin’ me to jail, run out and stop the team, to 
give me a mince turnover, and tell me with a giggle, 
that I must remember the way of the transgressor was 
hard, and that I couldn’t expect to be fed on mince 
pie in jail. ’ ’ 

“I’ll give that Plumy Partridge a good clip in the 
side o’ the head f’r that!” burst forth Peg, bristling 
all over with fierce indignation, while both Roxy and 
Prue took no pains to conceal their disgust at the un- 
generous taunt of the widow’s former apprentice. 

“She’ll find herself at the little end of the horn 
now!” cried Roxy, with a good deal of natural satis- 
faction at the sure prospect of Miss Plumy’s discom- 
fiture, and the blame that the whole community would 
be only too glad to lay upon her shoulders as the 
prime mover in their unjust persecution of the hapless 
widow. “’Twas spite that made her accuse you in 
the first place, and then when folks begun to make a 
stir about it, I don’t doubt that she enjoyed bein’ the 
chief witness against you. ’ ’ 

Mrs. Jeff nodded gravely, — her mind was too full of 
other matters just then, to dwell long upon her accuser’s 
motives or probable humiliation: 


prue’s new bonnet. 


183 


“I’ve got only one thing more to say,” and draw- 
ing the bound girl close to her side, she laid her hand 
caressingly upon her shoulder, — “I’ve made up my 
mind, if she’s willin’, to adopt Peg here as my own 
daughter. And, God helpin’ me. I’ll do jest as well 
by her, as if she was my own flesh an’ blood.” 

The girl’s eyes were downcast, and her lip trembled 
ominously, but her words would have sounded cold 
and unsatisfactory to any ears not accustomed to her 
moods: 

‘ ‘ Much obliged. Mis Hackett, much obliged. And 
I’ll say this much, that you may count on me f’r 
holdin’ up my end o’ the yoke, every time. ’ ’ 

Only that evening, alone with Roxy, did the stern 
barrier of blood and habit give way for a moment, as 
with her head in her friend’s lap, she whispered 
between her sobs: 

“ She shan’t never repent takin’ me for a daughter, 
for there never was a daughter born that’ll be more 
faithful and patient than I’ll be to her, jest as long as I 
have the breath o’ life left in me.” 

And very faithfully was that promise kept, even 
although its keeping required at times, an exercise of 
patient consideration that few would have felt them- 
selves capable of, and fewer still would have had the 
courage to persevere in. For the “widder Jeff,” 
humbled, penitent, and enlightened as she had been 
by suffering, had by no means lost her individuality, 
so that the old Adam (or Eve) would still crop out at 
times, — a sharp spined nettle or unsightly bit of 


184 


QUEENSHITHE. 


* * thrift ’ ’ among the painfully cultivated herbs 
grace, — whose uprooting was a work of time, and was 
apt to leave an unsightly gap that only infinite love 
and patience had power to overlook or cover. 

Protected by her patent, Roxy wrought faithfully in 
her special calling, building up little by little, a 
business whose proportions, modest as they would 
seem to us, more than fulfilled her highest hopes, and 
enabled her to carry out the plans that had, at one 
time, seemed so utterly hopeless of fulfillment. 

Sensible and keen witted, even to extreme old age, 
she still clung to the delusion (?) that all wrongs, 
individual as national, could, if they would, find 
redress at the governmental headquarters, where 
Justice waits, with fairly balanced scales, to secure to 
every man his inborn right to work, with a fair 
remuneration for that work when fairly done. 

“ One man’s right to a living, under this govern- 
ment, is just as good as the next one’s — (so President 
Jefferson said, and I guess he knew what he was 
talking about.”) 

In this simple formula was comprised her whole 
political creed, and to the day of her death she knew 
no other. 


THE END. 


























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